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r. V./ :im\ %/ V /— ^ ^ - 







CATTY ATKINS 
FINANCIER 


Books by 

CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND 


Mark Tidd 

Mark Tidd in the Backwoods 
Mark Tidd in Business 
Mark Tidd’s Citadel 
Mark Tidd, Editor 
Mark Tidd, Manufacturer 
Catty Atkins 
Catty Atkins, Riverman 
Catty Atkins, Sailorman 
Catty Atkins, Financier 


HARPER & BROTHERS 
Established 1817 
















X 







IN THE HOLE WE PUT THE BOX, AND THEN WE SET BACK THE FIRST STONE 

[See page 57] 


CATTY ATKINS 
FINANCIER 


By 

Clarence Budington Kelland 

Author Of “MARK TIDD,” “MARK TIDD, SAILORMAN” 
“MARK TIDD, RIVERMAN,” ETC. 


Illustrated 




HARPER fcf BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXXIII 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Copyright, 1923 
Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.S.A. 


First Edition 

D—X 




MAY 19'23 


©C1A705500 




ILLUSTRATIONS 


In This Holb We Put the Box, and Then We 

Set Back the First Stone. Frontispiece 

“What’ll You Take for That Caseful of 
Junk, as It Stands, Lock, Stock, and Bar¬ 
rel? All of It!”. Facing p. 80 

When I Came Back Catty Had Pawky Ready 
for the Trip, Wires and Boxes and Every¬ 
thing . “ " 136 

<( ff 


I Gave Him a Little Push and He Crawled in 


233 






CATTY ATKINS 
FINANCIER 
































CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


CHAPTER ONE 

C ATTY,” says I, “it can’t be done.” 

“What can’t?” he said, and cocked his 
eyes at me with the kind of expression he gets 
in them when he is looking for an argument. 
Catty Atkins loves arguments the way a mouse 
loves cheese. 

“Why,” says I, “getting to be a millionaire.” 
“Folks have,” he says. 

“But not the way the paper says this fellow 
did.” 

“How was that?” 

“It says he earned fifty dollars working 
on a farm, and then started out. And he made 
that fifty grow into a million.” 

“How long ago?” says Catty. 

“When he was forty.” 

“Huh,” says Catty, kind of disdainful. 
“Pretty slow, wasn’t he. Must have taken 
him more than twenty years.” 

“I’d like to see you raise fifty dollars to a 
million in a hundred years,” says I. 

1 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

He looked me over a minute and then he 
says, “We’ve got fifty dollars.” 

“We have,” says I, “and then some.” 

“Then let’s make a million.” 

“Your tree is full of crows,” says I. 

“Wee-Wee Moore,” says he, “'we can do it.” 

“We can peel sunburn off a garter snake,” 
says I. 

“Listen here. This sort of gets me excited. 
Let’s try it anyhow.” 

“Everybody does,” says I. “Show me a man 
that isn’t trying to be a millionaire.” 

“Hardly anybody is,” says he. “Most men 
are contented to run groceries, or drive trucks, 
or work in a bank, or dig ditches. They don’t 
try for anything else. So long as they can 
make a pretty fair living, why, they’re sat¬ 
isfied. They don’t set out to be millionaires, 
so they never get to be millionaires.” 

“Huh,” says I. 

“It won’t hurt to try,” says he. 

“I’ll do anything once,” says I, “but let’s 
not advertise it. Folks would put us in a 
padded cell.” 

“All right. Secret it is. Wait a minute 
while I think it out.” So I waited while he 
puckered up his eyes and kind of waved the 
end of his nose in the air, and thought. “I’ve 

2 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

got it,” says he. “We’ll go in partnership. 
Our capital is fifty dollars. We’ll see how 
big we can make it grow during this vacation. 
A start toward our million.” 

“Fine,” says I. “Mowing lawns, I suppose.” 

“That,” says he, “is labor. It isn’t finance.” 

“Oh, this is going to be finance.” 

“With a capital F,” says he. “The idea is 
to make our money earn more money. That’s 
the rule of the game. We musn’t earn money 
just by working. The only way we can use 
our fifty dollars is to use it, see?” 

“I don’t,” says I. 

“I hardly expected you to,” says he. 

“Go chase yourself,” says I. 

“Now listen,” he says, “while I print out 
the directions. We’re to use our fifty dollars 
to make money with. That means we can’t 
just work at some job and add what we earn 
to the fifty. Any money we make, the fifty 
must have a share in. It must be money we 
couldn’t make without using the fifty as cap¬ 
ital. Understand now?” 

“I kind of see a dim light,” says I. “We 
can’t earn a dollar driving the grocery wagon. 
That’s labor. But we can buy a cow with our 
fifty and sell it for sixty—and that’s finance.” 

“You plunked it right in the eye,” says he. 

3 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“When do we start ?” says I. 

“Now/’ says he, and that was just like him. 
When he got it into his head to do a thing, 
he was always sorry he couldn’t start it yes¬ 
terday, but so long as he couldn’t he wouldn’t 
waste a second. It had to start right then. 
Wouldn’t waste a minute. 

“We’ll go to the bank and draw fifty dol¬ 
lars out of our savings account,” says he. 

“You carry it,” I says, “because if I did, 
we’d be fifty dollars farther away from our 
million than we are now.” 

“You’d lose your skin if it wasn’t stuck on 
you,” he says. “Come on.” 

Just as we were coming out of the bank I 
looked up and there was a kid about our age 
driving up in an automobile. It was a little 
one with just one seat, but it looked pretty 
slick. 

“We’ll have one of them when we get our 
million,” says I. 

“Who is he?” says Catty. 

“Never saw him before,” says I. 

Then the kid stopped his car and leaned 
out and looked us up and down kind of un¬ 
pleasant and when he’d got through he says, 
“Hey, you kids, where can I buy some gaso¬ 
line in this cow pasture?” 

4 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“You don't buy it," says Catty, “you have 
to milk it from the cows." 

“Don’t get smart with me," says the kid. 

“No, sir," says Catty, innocent-like. “Thank 
you, sir." 

“I want some gas for my car," says the 
kid. “How can I get it?" 

“One way is to have better manners," says 
Catty. 

But I was interested. “Say," I says, “is 
that your car?" 

Catty sent his elbow into my ribs, but I 
didn’t care. I wanted to know. 

“ ’Course it’s mine," says the kid, kind of 
swelling up like he was a balloon. “Dad gave 
it to me on my birthday." 

“He must like you," says Catty. 

“He gives me everything I ask for. You 
bet he likes me," the kid says. 

“That must be because he knows you better 
than I do," says Catty. “Now I wouldn’t give 
you an auto on your birthday. Uh-uh." 

“From the looks of you, you couldn’t give 
me a postage stamp." 

“Never can tell from the looks of a bee how 
hard he can sting," says Catty. 

“I got no time to talk to you," says the kid. 

5 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“I want some gas, and I want it quick. I got 
to get back to the lake.” 

“Go ahead,” says Catty. “Nobody's got you 
chained. The quicker you get back to the lake 
the worse off the lake ’ll be.” 

“I’ve a notion,” says the kid, “to get out and 
bust you one.” 

“It’s been done,” says Catty. “But we’ve 
got a rule in this town. It says when anybody 
busts you one, you’ve got to bust him two right 
back again.” 

“Huh. My father had me taught to box by 
a professional.” 

Catty turned to me. “You take him on, Wee- 
wee. I’d like to see how a fellow fights that’s 
been taught by a professional.” 

“Oh, two to one,” says the kid. 

“No,” says Catty, “pick your choice. The 
odd man will hold the coats.” 

“I can’t stop to whale you to-day. I’ve got 
to get back. Where’s that gasoline place ?” 

“Go straight ahead,” says Catty, “till you 
come to the first corner. Turn straight up and 
keep on until two o’clock. . . . Come on, Wee- 
wee. We’ve got business to attend to.” 

So off we walked, leaving that kid looking as 
if somebody had fed him a red pepper. Honest, 

6 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


I thought he was going off like a firecracker. 
But Catty never looked back. 

“Guess he’s a millionaire,” says I. 

“If he is,” says Catty, “then I don’t want to 
be one.” 

“Wonder who he is?” 

“Guess I know,” Catty says. 

“Who?” 

“Son of that man that built the big house on 
the lake. Bought the old Ramsey Farm and 
fixed it up for a summer place. I heard they 
came yesterday.” 

“What’s his name ?” 

“Toop,” says Catty. 

“Gosh,” says I, “I wouldn’t have a name like 
that for all his money.” 

“Names don’t matter,” says Catty. “It’s 
what you do with them.” 

“Maybe,” says I, “but Toop sounds like 
some kind of animal caught in the wilds of 
Australia.” 

Catty shook his head. “I feel it in my bones 
I’m going to have trouble with that kid.” 

Well, that was that, but the feeling Catty 
had in his bones was good prophecy. Trouble 
was what we had with Mister Toop. We had 
bushels of it. Toop! Now, how do you sup¬ 
pose he got that name. And his first name was 

7 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Adrian. Can you beat it ? Adrian Toop. Oh, 
my aunt’s cat’s hind foot! 

“Let’s get busy,” says Catty. 

“Fine.” 

“Now, how can we use fifty dollars to make 
some more?” 

“Start a lemonade stand,” says I. 

“Remember the last one we had?” 

“Sure.” 

“How much did we make?” 

“About two dollars in a week.” 

“Guess we won’t tackle a lemonade stand,” 
says he. “We got to think this out careful 
before we invest. First, we’ve got to make sure 
we won’t lose money. That’s the first rule of 
making money, or if it isn’t, it ought to be. 
We’ve got to invest safely. Then we’ve got to 
see to it we make a good return on our money. 
What we want is a quick turnover.” 

“Anything like an apple turnover ?” say I. 

“A quick turnover means you put your 
money into something you can sell right off 
and make a profit and have your money back 
to invest in something else. The more often 
you turn your money over the more profit you 
make.” 

“Good,” says I, “you turn it over to me, and 

8 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


I’ll turn it over to you again. That ’ll be two 
turnovers. How much ’ll we make on it?” 

“Wee-wee,” says Catty, “there are days 
when you’re almost intelligent, but yesterday 
was the day. Maybe there ’ll be another to¬ 
morrow, but to-day—well, to-day you better 
stay in the house, where nothing can hurt you.” 

“Can we hire folks to work for us?” 

“That’s fair,” says he. “All capitalists do.” 

“Then,” says I, “why not get some jobs 
mowing lawns? We can get, say fifty cents 
apiece. Then we can hire other kids to do the 
mowing for, say, forty cents. Give us ten cents 
profit on each lawn.” 

“Now,” says Catty, “you’re getting around 
toward an idea. Maybe to-day is one of your 
bright days.” 

“Well says I. 

“No hurry. We’ll talk it over, and think it 
over, and examine into all the investment op¬ 
portunities that are open to us. It’s bad to 
decide too quickly.” 

“All right,” says I. “I’ve thought up some¬ 
thing. Now you think up something.” 

“A fellow who can have one good idea, can 
have a dozen,” says Catty. “That’s what’s 
wrong with so many folks. They get one good 
notion, and they rest on it. Your head’s to 

9 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

think with. It’s there to make you get along 
in the world. So, Wee-wee, don’t stop just be¬ 
cause you got an idea. Get another and an¬ 
other and another. If you can make money 
out of one idea, you can make four times as 
much with four ideas.” 

“Sounds reasonable,” says I. “Here goes. 
One, two, three— Splash!” 

So there we sat, on the fence just this side 
of Catty’s father’s mills, and we thought and 
thought and thought. I didn’t have another 
idea come to me, but pretty soon I saw one 
begin to blossom all over Catty. 

“I guess I got something,” says he. “What 
do you think of this ?” 

“Spill it,” says I, “and we’ll see.” 


10 



CHAPTER TWO 


I NEVER knew it was so hard to make 

money. Once I heard a man say that if you 

had money, it was easy to make more. Well, 

he didn't know what he was talking about. 

There were Catty and I. We had money. 

Fifty dollars. We started out to make a mil- 
«/ 

lion. It was afternoon and we hadn’t made a 
single cent! We’d been at it four whole hours 
and our fifty dollars wasn’t a bit larger than it 
had been at the start. 

“There,” says I to Catty, “you see. You 
can’t make money. Look at the day almost 
gone. It can’t be done. I knew it couldn’t.” 
“You’ve got to get an idea first,” says he. 
“What good is an idea?” says I. “You can’t 
sell ideas.” 

“Can’t, eh?” says he. “You can sell ’em 
quicker ’n anything else if they’re any good. 
Look at the man who had an idea you could 
reap grain with a machine instead of with a 
scythe. Sold it, didn’t he? And the man who 
thought up an automobile. It was just an idea 
in the beginning, but he sold it.” 

11 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“That was inventing/’ says I, “and we’re not 
inventors.” 

“Everything,” says he, “that you think up is 
inventing.” 

“Well,” says I, “just before lunch you said 
you had an idea. Now get busy with it. You 
haven’t told me what it is yet.” 

“I was just working it into shape,” says he. 

“Is it worked?” 

“Pretty nearly.” 

“Fit the rules—the one that we made up that 
we had to use our money to make more?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then, for cat’s sake, what is it?” 

But before he could tell me an automobile 
stopped by us and a man hollered, “Hey, you 
kid.” 

We looked up to see what he wanted. 

“Sav,” he says, “do you know anybody who 
has a rowboat for sale?” 

“What kind of a rowboat?” says Catty. 

“Why,” says the man kind of sharp and 
domineering, “one with oars to it, that goes 
in the water.” 

“Um. ...” says Catty, “you don’t care 
whether it’s flat-bottomed, round-bottomed, 
clinker, or what, eh?” 

The man looked kind of blank, and you could 

12 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

see he didn’t know a rowboat from a poplar 
tree. 

“What I want is a good safe rowboat,” he 
says. 

“I can sell you one,” says Catty. “Twelve- 
foot boat, clinker bottom, two pairs of oars. 
Built of cedar. She’s in fine shape, fresh 
painted.” 

“Where is it?” 

“Still,” says Catty, half to himself, “I dun- 
no’s I want to sell. Won’t sell unless I get my 
price.” 

“Where can I see it?” 

“I wouldn’t let it go a cent less than thirty- 
five dollars,” says Catty. “So if you don’t want 
to pay that, you need’t look at it at all.” 

“I guess I can stand thirty-five dollars,” says 
the man kind of pompous-like. 

“All right then, you be at the waterworks 
down on the bayou at three o’clock. I’ll have 
her there.” 

“Can’t we go now ?” says the man. 

“I’ll have her there at three,” says Catty. 
“It’s the only boat I know of in town that’s 
for sale. Three o’clock.” 

“All right,” says the man, and off he drove 
in his car. 

Then I turned to Catty. “What kind of a 

13 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

joke are you playing on that fellow ?” I wanted 
to know. “You don’t own any more rowboats 
than a camel in the desert of Sahara. You 
never owned a rowboat. You never wanted to 
own a rowboat.” 

“But I’m going to own one in half an hour,” 
says he. 

“Build it?” says I, kind of sarcastic. 

“No,” says he, “I’m going to pick it off a 
rowboat vine.” 

“What ’re you up to, anyhow?” 

“Opportunity,” says he. 

“Fiddlesticks,” says I. 

“If you’re going to be a financier, you’ve got 
to be ready to grab opportunities,” says he. 
“As soon as this man says rowboat I knew it 
was a chance to make money.” 

“You as good as sold that man a boat, and 
you don’t own any. He’ll go down there at 
three o’clock, and you won’t be there and the 
boat won’t be there. Next time he sees you 
he’ll chase you up the side of a house.” 

“You’re no financier,” says Catty. 

“Maybe not, but I’m not your kind of a joker 
either.” 

“Come along,” says Catty. 

“Where?” 

“Down to the waterworks.” 

14 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“You don’t mean you’re going there?” 

“You bet,” says he. 

“Leave me out,” says I, “that man’ll come, 
and he’ll boot us both into the drink.” 

“Maybe not,” he says kind of provoking, and 
of course I went along, because I couldn’t very 
well do anything else. If Catty was going to 
get himself into a mess, I just naturally had to 
be along to kind of help out if there was any 
helping to be done. 

We went to the engine room of the water¬ 
works, and Catty says, “Afternoon, Mr. Frid- 
dle. How’s the pump working to-day ?” 

“Same’s usual,” says Mr. Friddle. 

“My,” says Catty, “you keep that engine 
looking fine. It’s a wonder more folks don’t 
come down to look at it. One of the sights of 
the town, I say.” 

“Huh,” says Mr. Friddle. 

“Pike bitin’ ?” asked Catty. 

“Too dry. Nothin’s bitin’.” 

Then Catty turned and looked toward the 
bayou, which was maybe a hundred feet away. 
“Got a new boat?” he says, kind of astonished. 

“Painted,” says Mr. Friddle. 

“Looks like new,” says Catty. 

“Good’s new,” says Mr. Friddle. “Fixed her 
up to sell.” 


15 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“To sell? Honest?” Catty turned to me 
and says, “Don’t you wish we owned a boat? 
Wish we had money enough to buy her. But 
boats cost a lot of money.” 

“This one don’t,” says Mr. Friddle. “It’s 
dirt cheap.” 

“Maybe to you, Mr. Friddle, but what would 
be cheap to a man like you would be awful 
dear to us.” He kind of hesitated like he was 
afraid to ask, and then he did ask, “How much 
you want for her?” 

“Thutty dollars,” says Mr. Friddle. 

“I don’t s’pose that’s much for a fine boat 
like that, but thirty dollars! Say, Wee-wee, 
how much we got between us? We could dig 
up twenty-five, couldn’t we?” 

“I—I guess so,” says I. 

“Twenty-five,” says Catty, as doleful as if 
he was going to his own funeral. “ ’Tain’t only 
five dollars less than thirty. Wouldn’t take 
twenty-five dollars for her, Mr. Friddle?” 

“G’wan and don’t pester me,” says Mr. 
Friddle. 

So we went away, but not far. Catty took 
twenty-five dollars out of his pocket, and it was 
all in one-dollar bills. “I got ’em in ones on pur¬ 
pose,” says he. “Fifty one-dollar bills look like 
a lot more money than two twenties and a ten.” 

16 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“We’d better get out of here before that man 
. comes.” 

“He isn’t due till three,” says Catty. “I’m 
going to let Mr. Friddle look at this money. 
There’s folks who can’t look at money without 
wanting it.” 

So back we went. Mr. Friddle was sitting 
outside the door, looking at the bayou. We 
didn’t say a word, but sat down about ten 
feet away from him, and Catty took out the 
money. 

“Let’s count it,” says he, “to make sure we 
haven’t lost any.” 

We started in to count. Catty waved every 
bill around where Mr. Friddle could see it, and 
took a lot of time to it. He felt over every 
bill to see there weren’t two sticking together. 

“Twenty-five,” says I. “It’s all there.” 

“I didn’t make it but twenty-four,” says 
Catty. “We’ll count it again.” 

We did. I made twenty-five the same as 
before, but Catty couldn’t get past twenty-four. 
I was disgusted with him. “Say,” I says, 
“what ails you? If you can’t count to twenty- 
five you’d better go off in the woods and 
practice.” 

“There aren’t but twenty-four,” he says 
stubborn-like. 


17 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“There’s twenty-five,” says I. 

Then Catty turned to Mr. Friddle. “Won’t 
you please count this over for us?” he asked. 
“We can’t seem to make it come out right.” 

Well, Mr. Friddle he counted, slow and like 
he was enjoying himself. He kind of patted 
every bill, and when he was through he let 
them lay on his lap like they were a pet cat. 

“I make twenty-five,” he says. 

“I knew it,” says I. 

“What you goin’ to do with all this money?” 
says Mr. Friddle. 

“Put in the bank, I guess,” says Catty. 

“Um. . . .” He turned and looked at the 
boat. “Sure this is your’n to spend like you 
want to ?” 

“It belongs to us,” says Catty. 

“Your pas wouldn’t be mad at me if I was 
to sell you my boat ?” 

“They’d like it,” says Catty. 

“Well,” says Mr. Friddle, “twenty-five in the 
hand is worth thirty in the bush. Ye kin have 
the boat if you want her.” Mr. Friddle was 
shoving the money into his pocket. I looked 
at Catty and he looked back and winked a large 
wink. 

“We’ve bought a boat,” says he. “Let’s go 
look her over.” 


18 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


We did. Catty was grinning from one ear to 
the other. “I knew that old skeezicks would 
never let that real money get away, once he’d 
touched it,” says he. 

“How’d you know it?” says I. 

“Oh,” says Catty, “you have to study folks 
if you want to get along in this world. You 
got to know how they act.” 

“What I want to know,” says I, “is how this 
other man ’ll act. We’ve got twenty-five dol¬ 
lars tied up in a boat.” 

“He’ll be along pretty soon now,” says Catty. 

Sure enough, along came the man, and Catty 
met him. Right in front of Mr. Friddle. 

“Well,” says the man, “where’s your boat?” 

“Right there,” says Catty, pointing. 

Mr. Friddle kind of pricked up his ears, and 
when we went down to look at the boat he 
tagged right after. The man made believe he 
knew a lot about boats. He poked her and 
rocked her and asked if she leaked and all that, 
but you could see a boat was a complete 
stranger to him. 

“How much did you say it was?” he asked. 

“Thirty-five dollars,” says Catty. Mr. 
Friddle made a noise like somebody had stuck 
a pin in him. 

“Give you thirty,” says the man. 

19 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Told you not to come if you wouldn’t pay 
thirty-five/’ says Catty. 

Mr. Friddle made another noise. Something 
must have been hurting him. 

“Come on, Wee-wee,” says Catty to me. 

“Where you going?” says the man. 

“Home,” says Catty. 

‘Til give you thirty-two-fifty,” says the man. 

Catty just walked ofif. 

“All right,” says the man, “Fll give you 
thirty-five to stop the argument.” 

There hadn’t been any argument that I saw. 

“Cash,” says Catty. 

The man took out his pocketbook and counted 
off three tens and a five. “There you are,” he 
says. “Now this is my boat.” 

“For better and for worse,” says Catty. 
“Much obliged. Afternoon.” 

We started off, but Mr. Friddle followed us, 
kind of moaning. “Hem,” says he. 

We stopped and he looked at us mournful 
and reproachful. 

“Thutty-five dollars,” says he. 

“Thirty-five,” says Catty. 

“You knowed it,” said Mr. Friddle. 

Catty didn’t say anything. 

Mr. Friddle waggled his head. “Calc’late 
I'm a-losin’ of my grip,” he says to himself, 

20 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“when two kids can come along and horn- 
swoggle me in sich a way as this.” He waggled 
his head some more. “Young feller/’ says he 
to Catty, “you want to watch out. You’re goin’ 
to end up either ownin’ a bank or in jail—and 
I got a idee jail ’ll be the place. . . . Thutty- 
five dollars. Ten dollars smouged off of me. 
By a kid.” 

“Fair and square, wasn’t it?” says Catty. 

“Mebby so,” says Mr. Friddle, “but it was 
slick, all-fired slick.” He went into the engine 
room, and the last we saw of him he was still 
waggling his head and saying over and over, 
“Thutty-five dollars. . . . Thutty-five dollars.” 

We walked toward home. “Well,” says 
Catty, “our fifty has grown to sixty.” 

“The first day,” says I. “That’s five dollars 
apiece we’ve made. Pretty good wages. . . . 
Now what’s your big idea ?” 

“It wasn’t such a big one,” says Catty, “just 
a kind of starter. Something to begin with. 
. . . Say, you said money couldn’t make money, 
didn’t you? Well, what did it just do?” 

“Luck,” says I 

“Luck nothing,” says Catty. 

“What if that man had asked somebody else 
about boats?” 

“Why,” says Catty, “somebody else wouldn’t 

21 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


have had the money to seize the opportunity, or 
wouldn’t have seen it was an opportunity, or 
they wouldn’t have known how to work it. 
There isn’t any luck about it. Everybody has 
chances, only they don’t know they are 
chances. That’s what’s the matter with most 
folks who complain about their luck. What 
they ought to complain about is their brains.” 

“That isn’t telling me your idea.” 

“All right,” says he, “let’s sit down and 
whittle, and I’ll see what you think of it.” 


22 


CHAPTER THREE 


fT^HIS,” says Catty, “isn’t the Big Idea, 

A not the one that’s going to make our mil¬ 
lion. It’s just one to be working at until the 
big one comes along.” 

“Well,” says I, “if you don’t get to telling 
what it is pretty soon, I’ll be too old to work at 
it before I know what it is.” 

“It’s this,” says Catty. “Summer visitors.” 

“Board ’em?” says I. 

“No,” says Catty, “manicure their finger 
nails.” He looked at me kind of irritated, so I 
shut up and waited. It’s hard to do. “They’re 
out there at the lake,” says he, “working awful 
hard pretending they’re having a good time. 
Maybe they are. Anyhow, they’ve got to eat, 
and they’ve got to eat every day. A lot of them 
would rather have things brought than to drive 
into town to get them. So here’s the idea. We’ll 
rent a horse and a light wagon, and we’ll drive 
out every afternoon and take orders for any¬ 
thing. See? To be delivered in the morning. 
We can use our capital buying garden stuff and 
eggs and such-like to sell, and on the stuff they 

23 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


order from stores we can charge extra for de¬ 
livering. Maybe we won’t make much, but we’ll 
be making something, and all the time we can 
be keeping our eyes open for a place to invest 
our money.” 

“Sounds reasonable,” says I. 

“What we’ve got to keep in mind,” says he, 
“is that we’ve got to keep our money working. 
Every dollar we have lying idle is a loafer.” 

“Sure,” says I. “Where can we rent a nag?” 

“That’s easy,” says he, “but before we rent 
one we’ll try out the scheme. Take our bikes. 
We’ll do it this afternoon. Jt isn’t much of a 
ride and we can divide up the cottages and take 
orders. If it works out, then we can rent a 
horse. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to think up 
something else.” 

“Fine,” says I. “Let’s get busy.” 

“All business will be C. O. D.,” says Catty. 

“You bet,” says I. 

So we got our bicycles and started off. The 
road ran out beside the river, and then branched 
off to skirt the big swamp. It passed through 
Six Mile Woods, and then came out on the lake. 
It was a pretty good road as roads go and we 
hustled along average spry. We were just 
crossing the corner of Six Mile Woods when a 

24 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

man stepped out of a clump of bushes and 
stood in the road. He looked at us sharp. 

“Where you goin’ ?” says he. 

I was kind of scared, because it was a lonely 
place, but Catty didn’t seem to get any steam 
up at all. “We’re going to the lake,” he says. 

“Pass anybody on the road?” the man 
asked. 

“Several,” says Catty. “Why?” 

“See a kind of funny-lookin’ feller with big 
bug-eye specs?” 

“No.” 

The man turned and spoke to somebody back 
in the bushes. “Either he ain’t come yet, or else 
he’s ahead of us,” he says. 

“He’s ahead, all right,” says the other. 

That was all of that. We rode along kind of 
wondering. 

“Now what d’ye s’pose those men were 
after?” says Catty. 

“Funny-lookin’ feller with specs,” says I. 

“Why were they after him? Who were 
they? I didn’t much care for that man’s 
looks.” 

“No idea why they were after him. Maybe 
they’re deputies,” says I. 

“Didn’t act like it,” says Catty. “I’ll bet 
something is up.” 


25 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Maybe,” says I, “and it can be higher up so 
long as it doesn't interfere with us.” 

But right then I had a feeling. If something 
was up in the neighborhood, Catty Atkins 
would be in it or bust. He was the greatest 
meddler I ever saw, and trouble came and sat 
on his lap like it was a cat and he offered to 
scratch its head. I didn’t like the looks of 
things from that minute. 

“Wish we hadn’t come out this road,” says I. 

“Why?” 

“Because,” says I, “we’re going to land in 
another muddle.” 

“You give me a pain, Wee-wee Moore,” says 
Catty. “What’s the use living if you can’t be 
in things? We’ve been in several, haven’t we, 
and got a* lot out of them.” 

“I’ve had enough to last me,” says I. “Maybe 
you like being scared to death, but I don’t. I’m 
for peace and quiet.” 

“Peace and quiet’s about all we’ll get this 
summer,” says he. Then he stopped and got 
off his bike. “What’s that?” he says. 

“What’s what?” I asked him. 

He pointed, and I looked. What I saw 
looked like the back part of a man who was 
crawling along on all fours. The thing moved. 

“Let’s take a look,” says Catty. 

26 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Nix/’ says I, “Em taking orders for garden 
stuff, not for inmates of menageries/' 

“It's no animal," says he. 

“So much the worse," says I, “I don't want 
anything to do with a man who crawls around 
in these woods on all fours. Maybe he wouldn't 
fit into a menagerie, but he’d go fine in a lunatic 
asylum." 

“What," says Catty, “if he turned out to be 
an escaped lunatic?" 

“I'll tell you what," says I. “If he did turn 
out that way, you’d have to ride your bike 
awful fast to keep up with me." 

“Let's take a look," says he. 

“There's nothing I want to see," I says. 

“All right," he says, “stay there and wait 
for me." 

He dropped his bike and started into the 
woods. I held back a minute, because I didn't 
have any hankering to get acquainted with any 
crazy men. I never like that kind. No telling 
what they’ll do. But Catty went right along, 
and there wasn’t anything for me to do but to 
follow after him. It wasn’t any fun, and I 
didn’t expect to get any fun out of it, and I was 
so scared my teeth sounded like a telegraph 
office. But it wouldn’t look right to let Catty 
go boggling off alone. 


27 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

I went so as to be ready to turn and scoot if 
the lunatic made a move toward us. It’s all 
right to be brave, but I’ll bet more brave men 
get into hospitals than men who use some com¬ 
mon sense. All you get by being brave is a 
medal; what you get by being cautious is good 
health. 

Catty went mogging along, but as he got 
closer to the thing, whatever it was, he went 
slower and kind of sneaked up on it Indian 
style. I sneaked, too, only more so. We cut 
across and came up in front of it, and there, 
sure enough, was a man on all fours crawling 
along as if his life depended on it. 

“Howdy-do?” says Catty. 

The man looked up and blinked. He wore 
the biggest round glasses I ever saw, and his 
eyes were round and a kind of soft blue, and al¬ 
together he looked a lot like a baby—sort of 
vague and helpless. “Er—how do you do ?” he 
says. 

“I'm pretty well,” says Catty. “Were you 
looking for something?” 

“Er—exactly. Precisely. I am, as you 
rightly observe, looking for something.” 

“Did you drop it?” says I. 

“No,” said the young man slowly, blinking 
at us through his specs, “I can’t say that I 

28 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

dropped it. As a matter of fact I couldn’t have 
dropped it, because I never had it. In any 
event I couldn’t have carried it.” 

“No?” says Catty. “What was it?” 

“A hiding place,” said the young man. 

“To hide in?” says I. 

“My understanding of hiding places,” said 
the stranger, “is that they may be utilized for 
the purpose of hiding.” 

“How—how did you escape?” says I. 

“Escape?” he looked at me sort of puzzled. 
“Oh—er—I haven’t escaped—not completely 
escaped. That is my purpose. I desire to es¬ 
cape, utterly and completely.” 

“You can’t escape very fast if you keep on 
crawling,” says I. 

“Crawling is the way to escape,” he said 
severely. “It is the technically correct method. 
Invariably Indians, who are admitted to be the 
stealthiest of human beings—I say, invariably 
Indians crawl when they wish to escape. I 
have read descriptions of it in books. Now, 
then, if the most skilled of humans crawl, then 
crawling must be best way to do it. Therefore 
I crawl. It is difficult to descry a crawling 
figure in the woods.” 

“We descried you,” says I. 

“That,” said the young man, “was unfor- 

29 





CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

tunate. Possibly due to faulty technique on 
my part. I am not an expert crawler. Indeed 
I cannot remember ever to have crawled about 
in the woods before to-day.” 

“Why did you start to-day?” 

“Because this is the first occasion upon which 
I have desired to escape.” 

“From whom?” 

The young man looked at us and sort of 
wrinkled his eyes and tried to look shrewd, 
but he couldn’t do it worth a cent. “From the 
persons I desire to avoid,” he said. 

“Keepers” said I, and Catty looked at me 
with a scowl. 

“Keepers? Er—not exactly. Not precisely.” 
Then he straightened his shoulders and sat 
back on his haunches. “Young man, what sort 
of keepers do you mean? Answer me at once. 
I trust you do not refer to that species of 
keepers who have in charge the mentally 
unbalanced.” 

“Of course not” said I. 

“I should have resented that very much. I 
am not mentally unbalanced. I am in full pos¬ 
session of all my faculties. I may, without 
fear of successful contradiction, assert that my 
mental faculties are somewhat—somewhat 
above the ordinary.” 


30 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Yes,” says Catty, “that’s the way you look 
to me. But if you’re going to escape, and we’re 
to help you, we’ve got to know something about 
it. . . . We passed two men a mile back who 
were looking for somebody. Said it was a man 
with glasses. Are you the one?” 

“I rather fancy so,” said the young man. “It 
would be extraordinary if there were two fugi¬ 
tives in this immediate section. Fugitives are 
not common. Nor, if I may say so, is it ordi¬ 
nary for me to be a fugitive. I’ve never done it 
before. I do not enjoy it.” 

“What made you escape, then ?” says I. 

“I have not escaped. That must be clear. 
If there are persons on my track, then I am 
still in a condition of endeavoring to escape. 
It would be incorrect to maintain that I have 
made good my escape until all pursuit has been 
abandoned as futile.” 

“That sounds logical,” says Catty. “But 
who are these pursuers?” 

“They are very troublesome and disagreeable 
persons.” 

“I’ll bet they are. Why do they want to 
catch you?” 

“A-ha,” said the young man with a second 
effort to be very cunning and secretive, “that 
would be telling. That would be telling.” 

31 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Listen here,” said Catty, “if you’re all right, 
we are willing to help you out. But we’ve got 
to know. Are you running away from the 
sheriff or anything like that?” 

“Am I, do you mean—a malefactor? A 
criminal? To that I can only answer with 
scorn that I am not.” 

“Well, then, are you getting away because 
you’ve done something you are ashamed of?” 

“I’m endeavoring to escape,” said the young 
man, “because I’ve done something I am rather 
—and justly so—proud of.” 

“Never heard of such a thing,” says I. 

“I venture to assert that I could name a con¬ 
siderable number of things and events you have 
never heard of,” said the young man sharply. 

Catty turned to me. “He’s all right,” he said. 
“You can tell that by looking at him. Just got 
into some kind of a mess. We’ve got to help 
him out. He’ll lose himself in here alone, or 
get caught sure.” 

“I am lost at this minute,” said the stranger. 
“On the whole, that is desirable in my situ¬ 
ation. The more lost I am the more difficult I 
shall be to find.” 

“Have you any idea where you are going?” 

“Not the slightest. I alighted from the train 
in a town whose name I do not know—hur- 

32 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


riedly. I abandoned my baggage. Almost im¬ 
mediately I set about escaping, and here I am.” 

“Say,” says Catty, “let’s get back under 
cover. Those men might come along any time. 
Our bikes are out in the road, too. That ’ll 
attract attention.” 

“Before we go any farther in this matter,” 
said the young man, “do you know an indi¬ 
vidual who wears the name of Toop?” 

“Toop?” we both stared at him. “Sure we 
know who he is. He lives out on the lake— 
summer camper.” 

“Then I bid you a good afternoon,” said the 
young man. “No friend of Mr. Toop can be a 
friend of mine.” 

“But we’re not friends of Mr. Toop,” said 
Catty. “I’m going to give his son a good lick¬ 
ing before I’m done with him.” 

“That,” said the stranger, “puts a different 
complexion upon the matter. I shall be glad to 
avail myself of your assistance.” 

“Duck,” said Catty quickly. “Roll behind 
that log, quick. Roll! They’re coming along 
the road.” 


33 


CHAPTER FOUR 


1 LOOKED toward the road, and there were 
two men going along slowly and peering 
into the woods on both sides of them. One was 
the man who had stopped us a while back. I 
sneaked a look at the man with the big glasses. 
He’d scroutched down back of a big rotten 
log. I guessed he couldn’t be seen from the 
woods. 

“Come along,” says Catty to me. 

“Where?” 

“Road,” says he, and then to Mr. Glasses, 
“We’ll be back as soon as we get rid of those 
men.” 

I couldn’t see any sense to walking out where 
the men were, but I trotted along after Catty. 
The men had stopped by our bikes and were 
waiting for us. 

“Hello,” says Catty. 

“What you doing back in the woods?” asked 
one of the men suspiciously. 

“Studying zoology,” says Catty with a sober 
face. “We thought we saw a funny-looking 
animal as we rode along, so we went in to get 

34 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

a look. The only way to learn about the habits 
of animals is to watch them in their native 
state/’ 

“H’m, we’re looking for an animal, too,” says 
the other fellow. “Haven’t seen anything of a 
young man with specs, have you?” 

“Big round glasses that made him look like 
an owl?” says Catty. 

“That’s the ticket. Where’d you see him?” 

“In the bank, back in town,” says Catty. 

“When ?” 

“When we rode past.” 

The men looked at each other and scowled. 
“He’s behind us, then. Maybe he didn’t come 
out this road at all. You saw him in the bank, 
kid. What time?” 

“Less than an hour ago,” says Catty, “we 
saw a young man with big, round glasses on. 
He was standing in the bank window.” 

That was true, too. We did see just such a 
man, but he was Tommy Jenks, the cashier. 
However, Catty didn’t explain that. The men 
talked a minute and then turned back toward 
town. They seemed pretty mad about 
something. 

Well, we waited for them to get way out of 
sight and then we went back to where our man 
was lying behind his log. 

35 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“You can stand up now, if you want to,” 
says Catty. 

“Er—thank you, young man. The posture 
I was compelled to assume was most irksome.” 
He paused a minute and looked at us kind of 
owlish. “May I inquire your names?” he says. 

Catty told him, and then he said his name 
was Pawky—Harbottle Pawky. It looked like 
the kind of name he ought to have. 

“Will you,” said he, “join me in a—er—light 
luncheon?” And with that he unwrapped a 
package under his arm and drew out a box of 
chocolates, a pound of cheese, a bottle of 
pickles, and a package of fancy cookies. “I 
have not eaten,” he says, “since last night.” 

“Well,” says Catty, “you ought to make out a 
fair breakfast now—if your insides will stand 
the strain. Pm a pretty fair eater myself, but 
I never remember mixing candy and cheese and 
pickles to start off the day.” 

The young man stared at his food like he was 
surprised to see what it was. “It does seem a 
trifle ill selected,” he said. “Nevertheless, it is 
food. Nobody can deny that it is food. I—er— 
was in too great haste to make a thoughtful 
selection. However, I shall eat it. If I observe 
any ill effects I shall, in future, avoid a meal 
made of these articles.” 


36 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


His appetite was good. He began with the 
candy, and we helped him some there. Then 
he started on the cheese. Catty and I weren’t 
any use at all on the cheese. But Mr. Pawky 
did a pretty good job. Next he went for the 
crackers, and ended up with half a dozen 
pickles. It seemed like he wasn’t able to eat 
but one thing at a time. 

“Now,” says he, “if I had a drink of 
water, I should feel greatly refreshed and 
invigorated.” 

“It isn’t how you feel now,” says Catty. 
“It’s how you’re going to feel when those things 
find out they’re neighbors in your stummick!” 

“My digestion,” says Mr. Pawky, “is 
remarkable.” 

“It’s got to be,” says Catty. He scratched 
his nose like he does often when he has some¬ 
thing on his mind. “What’s worrying me,” he 
says, “is what in tunket we’re going to do with 
vou.” 

■r 

“You are under no obligation to do anything 
with me.” 

I snickered. “He couldn’t help it. He’s ex¬ 
posed and he’s bound to come down with it. 
He can’t get near anybody in trouble without 
catching it himself, and I usually get it from 
him.” 


37 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“My desire,” says Mr. Pawky, “is to conceal 
myself.” 

“We kind of guessed it,” says Catty. “What 
you got in that box?” 

The young man looked suspicious-like at 
Catty. “That box,” says he, “is private and 
personal.” 

“To be sure,” says Catty, “and it’s got in it 
what those men are chasing you to get.” 

“I do not admit it,” says Mr. Pawky. 

“You don’t have to,” says Catty. “How long 
have you got to hide?” 

“For an indefinite period,” says Mr. Pawky. 

“Um. . . . Then we’ve got to put you some 
place handy. You’ve got to be fed, and we 
can’t go traipsing all over the county to look 
after you. . . . Lemme see.” He thought a 
minute, and then he turned to me. “How about 
the lighthouse?” he says. 

The lighthouse was a good place. It was a 
kind of a funny place, too. There used to be a 
man lived out on the lake by the name of Gen¬ 
eral Gumble, and I guess he was kind of upset 
in his head. He lived ofif to one side where 
nobody else was, and his house was on a kind of 
rocky point. Ofif the end of the point was a 
little island, all over rocks, and he built him a 
lighthouse there. He said an island like that 

38 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

ought to have a lighthouse on it, because it was 
a menace to navigation. Maybe it was, but 
there wasn't any navigation on our lake. Noth¬ 
ing but a few rowboats in that day, and every¬ 
body knew about the point, anyhow, and it 
wasn't the general thing to be out in a rowboat 
in a storm or in the dark when you couldn’t 
see. But General Gumble had to have his light¬ 
house, anyhow. He built it out of brick and 
painted it white, and every night he used to 
hang a lantern up in the top of it. It was a 
round lighthouse, maybe a dozen feet across at 
the base and about thirty feet high. You had 
to go up a ladder inside of it, and there were 
three rooms, one above the other. It was about 
as good a place to hide in as you could find, 
because it was away from the place where all 
the cottages were, and nobody was likely to go 
near it. 

So I says to Catty, “The lighthouse is jest the 
frog's hind legs,” says I. 

So we started out, Catty and I walking our 
bikes, and Harbottle Pawky lugging his big 
box, which seemed to be pretty heavy, and pant¬ 
ing along behind us. We had to rest quite a 
lot. We hid our bikes in the bushes after a 
while and cut across to Lighthouse Island. The 
island wasn't more than a dozen feet off the 

39 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

point, and you could get to it by stepping from 
rock to rock. At any rate, Catty and I could, 
but Mr. Pawky wasn’t much of a stepper. 

“Better let us lug that box over,” says Catty. 
“You can get along easier if you do.” 

But he wouldn’t. He hung on to it like grim 
death to a tomcat, and about half the time he 
was wading up to his waist. If he wanted to 
be stubborn, it wasn’t any skin off my nose. 
But if he’d stepped in a hole and hung on to 
that box, he’d have been anchored to the bottom 
so firm you’d have to get a derrick to haul 
him up. 

We got over to the lighthouse and found the 
old door loose on its hinges. It was easy to get 
in. It was kind of dark inside, and about as 
dusty and dirty and cobwebby as any place I 
ever saw. I guess it could hold the cobweb 
championship of the world. 

“Needs a little house-cleaning,” says Catty, 
“but you can make it pretty comfortable.” 

“There’s no bed,” says Mr. Pawky, like he 
was too astonished to get over it. 

“No,” says Catty, “there isn’t a bed, now I 
come to notice it, and the bathroom is out of 
order, so you can’t have hot and cold water. I 
wouldn’t be surprised if the electric lights were 
off, too. . . . Say, Mister Pawky, what did you 

40 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


expect? Elevators and a chambermaid? I 
thought you wanted to hide.” 

“I do,” says Mr. Pawky, “but I should like to 
do it as comfortably as possible.” 

“Well,” says Catty, “this is as comfortable 
as possible, and maybe a little more so. We'll 
show you how to make a bed of balsam twigs, 
and we can help you rig up some furniture and 
clean out the mess. Next time we come we'll 
fetch a broom. Give you something to occupy 
your mind with.” 

“My mind,” says Mr. Pawky, severe-like, “is 
amply occupied.” 

He looked all around and poked into corners 
and waggled his head. “Admirable place,” 
he said finally, “perfectly adapted to my 

needs. I can carry on my experiments-” 

and there he stopped quick and squinted 
at us. 

“You can carry on any way you want to,” 
says Catty, “just so you aren’t too noisy about 
it. . . . Now we’ve got business to look after, 
and you're safe. We’ll be back before dark 
with some truck you’ll need. In the meantime 
you'd better lay kind of low, and don’t go prowl¬ 
ing around or you'll lose yourself again. 
You're the kind of man that wants to stay put 
in one spot and hang on to that with both hands, 

41 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

so it won’t move off and leave him. . . . See 
you before dark.” 

We scrambled back to shore and got our 
bikes out of the bushes and started for the 
summer camps. 

“What d’ye make of him?” says Catty. 

“His egg’s addled,” says I. 

“I’m not so sure. Wonder what he’s got in 
that box.” 

“Solid gold lightnin’ rods,” says I, kind of 
sarcastic. 

“Huh. . . . And he wanted to know if we 
were friends of Mr. Toop. What’s Toop got to 
do with it?” 

“We might ask him,” says I. 

“I’ll bet you,” says Catty, “we’ve hit on some¬ 
thing mighty important. I’ll bet—say, I’ll bet 
there is going to be excitement in these parts.” 

“I don’t need any excitement,” says I. “What 
I love is peace and quiet. Besides, we’re going 
to be busy making our million.” 

“You can’t put in all your time making 
money,” says Catty. “You have to have 
recreation.” 

“Your idea of recreation,” says I, “is being 
chased by a pack of wolves. Me, when I enjoy 
myself, I like to do it where nobody’s after me 
with a shotgun.” 


42 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Fiddlesticks,” says he. And then, “Well, 
we got to get our minds down to business. 
There’s the first cottage. You tackle this row 
and I’ll move on to the next. Got your order 
book and pencil?” 

“Sure,” says I. 

“Go to it, then,” says he, “and let’s see who’s 
the best salesman.” 


* 


43 


CHAPTER FIVE 


I T took us maybe an hour and a half to can¬ 
vass the cottages and we did pretty well. 
Quite a few folks liked the idea of having regu¬ 
lar deliveries and of finding somebody to do 
their shopping. I was tickled to death, for out 
of my row of cottages I figured I had orders 
for as much as a hundred dollars’ worth of 
stuff. Catty came along, and he had as much 
as I did, if not more. 

“Til bet we make a lot of money out of this,” 
says I. 

“Um. . . . Wait till we see how it comes 
out,” he says. “Remember, we’ve got to figure 
in horse rent.” 

“But where,” says I, “does capital come in? 
This looks to me like just work—taking orders 
and delivering them.” 

“The capital comes in when we buy the 
stuff,” he says, “and that’s where I hope we’ll 
make the money.” 

“Show me,” says I. 

“Well,” he says, “there’s eggs. We’ve got 
orders for along about twenty dozen eggs. The 

44 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


market price of eggs in the store is fifty cents 
a dozen. Now we go to somebody with eggs 
and, instead of buying retail, we buy wholesale. 
Maybe for forty-five cents a dozen. See? 
That’s using our capital to make five cents on 
every twelve eggs. If we just delivered we 
wouldn’t make that money. All we would get 
would be pay for delivering.” 

“Ten per cent of what the thing costs,” 
says I. 

“No,” says he, “ten per cent of the market 
price.” 

“Well,” says I, “let’s get busy and see just 
what we do clean up.” 

The outcome of it was that we rented a horse 
for fifteen dollars a week with a rickety wagon. 
It wasn’t much, but it would do. Then we got 
together our orders. First, we ask what things 
cost, to get the market value, and then we 
haggled to get wholesale price, explaining what 
we were up to. Almost everybody saw that it 
would be a pretty good thing, so grocers and 
folks like that gave us a good discount. The 
market price of the stuff we bought came to 
fifty-three dollars and twenty-four cents. We 
managed to buy it for forty-eight dollars and 
four cents. I was disappointed when I saw 
what it came to, because I was sure all those 

45 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


orders would add up to a couple of hundred, 
like I said. But you never can tell. Anyhow, 
there was five dollars and twenty cents gain, 
and when you added the ten per cent for deliv¬ 
ering to that, it made a total of ten dollars and 
thirty-two cents. Of course we had to subtract 
from that what the horse and wagon cost, or 
two dollars and a half a day. That left us a 
net profit of seven dollars and eighty-two cents. 

“Huh,” says I, “that isn’t much toward a 
million.” 

“It’s better than a kick in the ear,” says 
Catty. “If we can keep it up for three months 
it ’ll be close to seven hundred dollars, which 
isn’t bad for a couple of kids. And it’s just a 
side line, too. When we really get into business 
we can hire somebody to do that part of the 
work. Maybe pay some trustworthy kid ten 
dollars a week to do it.” 

“You don’t think much of trustworthy kids, 
do you ?” says I. 

“Why?” says he. 

“You’d pay one less a day than we’re paying 
a busted down horse.” 

He kind of thought that over, and you could 
see it puzzled him some, but he didn’t have a 
word to say about it. 

As we went along the street I noticed a lot of 

46 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

signs stuck up, saying there was going to be 
a ball game between our town and Hopville 
Wednesday afternoon. 

“Doggone/’ says I. 

“Why?” says he. 

“We’ll miss all the ball games,” says I. 

“Well,” he says kind of resigned, “you can’t 
tend to business and baseball all at once.” And 
then he hit me a lick on*the back. “Say, Wee- 
wee, I dunno but what we can,” he says. 

“How?” 

“You stick here a jiffy, and I’ll tell you,” 
says he. 

He jumped on his bike and off he went like 
the dickens. In ten minutes he was back again 
with a grin as broad as a barn door. 

“I got it,” says he. 

“Got what?” 

“What I went after,” he says. 

“I hope you got it good,” says I, “and I hope 
it was a crack in the eye.” 

“It wasn’t. It’s a pop-corn wagon. Remem¬ 
ber old Jake Towsey—one-legged man that 
used to peddle pop corn with a two-wheeled 
wagon? Kind of a glass thing with a gas 
burner in it?” 

“Yes,” says I. 

“I thought maybe his widow might have the 

4 7 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

thing some place, and she did. I looked it all 
over, and a little tinkering and paint will make 
it as good as new. So I bought it. She let me 
have it for seven dollars and a half.” 

“What’s that got to do with baseball?” 
says I. 

“We’ll sell pop corn at the ball games,” he 
says. “There are three games a week.” 

“But who’ll look after the delivery business?” 

“We’ll take turns,” he says. “Or maybe we 
can do it all in the morning, and have after¬ 
noons free.” 

“Fine,” says I. “So now we’re in two 
businesses.” 

“And we’ll be in more,” he says. “That’s 
what I want. I want to get in a lot of things, 
and hire other folks to do the work, so you and 
I won’t have to do anything but have a kind of 
an office some place and manage the whole 
shooting match.” 

“That sounds fine,” says I. “Hop right to it. 
Sitting in an office and managing is a job I’m 
just cut out for. I can eat that kind of a job.” 

We got our orders loaded in the wagon and 
were ready to start for the lake. Of a sudden 
Catty says, “Tunket! We most forgot Har- 
bottle. We haven’t his things.” 

“What ’ll he need?” I wanted to know. 

48 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Blankets and a broom and some dishes. 
There’s an old oil stove in our barn for him to 
cook on, and a lantern.” 

“All right,” says I, “but there’s no money 
in it.” 

“You never can tell,” says Catty, “what 
there’s money in.” 

So we put on that stuff for Harbottle Pawky, 
and off we went. We didn’t forget to put in 
something for him to eat, either. 

“Maybe,” says I, “he’s got some money, and 
then we can take his orders like we do every¬ 
body else’s.” 

“Sure,” says Catty, but he didn’t seem very 
much interested in that part of it. 

We delivered our stuff to everybody before 
supper. At first we hadn’t intended delivering 
before the next morning, but we had Mr. Pawky 
on our hands and had to make the trip, so 
we killed two birds with one stone. It meant 
we could take orders as we went along and 
not have to deliver again until day after to¬ 
morrow—unless somebody needed something 
pressing. 

When we were all through, we drove as close 
to the lighthouse as we could, and kind of hid 
our wagon among the trees so it wouldn’t at¬ 
tract attention, and began to lug supplies in to 

49 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Harbottle Pawky. He seemed sort of glad to 
see us. 

“It’s rather lonely, isn’t it?” he said. 

“You wanted to be lonely,” says Catty. “You 
can’t hide and have a party at the same time.” 

“True,” says Mr. Pawky. “That is very 
true, but regrettable. Not that I crave society. 
I am not one who must always be in a crowd, 
but I have not seen a living soul since you left.” 

“Which,” says I, “proves you’ve found a 
good place to hide.” 

“How did the pickles and cheese and candy 
get along?” says Catty. 

“Er—why, I have been unaware of them. 
Indeed, I have eaten the rest of the box of 
candy.” 

“Wee-wee,” says Catty, “this is a remarkable 
man. I knew it the minute I set eyes on him. 
Now let’s get busy and start housekeeping. 
How are you with a broom, Mr. Pawky ?” 

“My experience with a broom,” said the 
young man, “has been exceedingly slight. I 
do not recall ever to have made use of such an 
implement.” 

“Well, that’s where your education is going 
to be improved.” He handed over the broom. 
“This end is the handle,” he says. “You grab 
hold of that and use the other end to sweep 

50 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


with. Better sprinkle the floors before you 
start or you’ll choke with the dust.” 

Mr. Pawky started in to sweep, and you could 
see right off that it wasn’t his strong holt. He 
was about as good at sweeping as I am at taking 
castor oil. I was going to take the broom and 
show him how it ought to be done, but Catty 
wouldn’t let me. He said Pawky had to learn, 
and now was as good a time as any other. 

While he was trying to clean up, Catty and 
I lugged in the blankets and stove and the rest 
of the things, and Pawky looked more and 
more bewildered. 

“You don’t expect me to cook?” he says, kind 
of cross-like. 

“Not,” says Catty, “if you feel like hiring a 
chef. But, so far as I can see, the only way 
you’re going to get anything to eat, is to 
cook it.” 

“But I never cooked a morsel.” 

' Catty stopped and looked at him, and then 
he says, in that patient voice of his which means 
he isn’t patient at all, “Say what can you do?” 

“Young man,” says Mr. Pawky, as dignified 
as a turkey gobbler, “I am an electrical en¬ 
gineer. I am a very good electrical engineer. 
Indeed, if the truth must be told, I believe I am 
the best electrical engineer in America.” 

51 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“I do love a modest man,” says Catty. “It 
must take brains to be one of those things, so 
you can use them learning how to cook. Til 
show you. It’s easy to make coffee, and flap- 
jacks. Anybody can cook meat and potatoes. 
. . . Say, have you any money ?” 

“What need have I of money? I’m hiding. 
In this lonely spot there is nothing to spend 
money for.” 

“Oh,” says Catty. “Then you figure to fish 
for your food? Or pick it off trees?” 

“A-hem. . . . Very true. I will require 
food. But there is no store, and I dare not go 
into town.” 

“Our business,” says Catty, “is supplying 
folks with what they need. Just give us your 
order and we’ll fill it. Cash on delivery.” 

“You needn’t pay for the stove and the blan¬ 
kets. But we had to buy the cooking things and 
the rest,” says I. “It came to six dollars and 
twenty cents.” 

“I’m sure I’m obliged to you,” says Mr. 
Pawky. “Fortunately, I have plenty of money. 
Here is a twenty-dollar bill. When that is used 
up apply to me for more.” 

We worked like beavers and got the old light¬ 
house cleaned out so it was fit to live in. We 
fixed up the top floor, where the light used to be, 

52 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

for a bedroom. The second floor was a kind of 
a parlor, though there wasn’t any furniture in 
it but a busted table, and the first floor was 
kitchen and dining room all in one. 

“How are you going to spend your days?” 
says Catty. “You have to pass the time 
somehow?” 

“I shall invent something,” says Mr. Pawky. 
“I welcome the leisure and the quiet. I can sit 
and think, which is the way to arrive at 
inventions.” 

“No,” says I, “honest? Are you an in¬ 
ventor? Did you ever invent anything—that 
was any good?” 

He looked at me kind of queer, and then he 
says, “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. Inventing is 
what got me in all this vexatious mess.” 

“Honest ?” says I. 

“Yes,” says he. 

“What ?” says I. 

“Doubtless, even in this rural district,” says 
he, “you have heard of the radiophone?” 

“We have,” says I. “Did you invent it ?” 

“No,” he says, “but I have invented some¬ 
thing which multiplies its value. I have solved 
its most troublesome problem. I have perfected 
a device, a never-failing device, to eliminate 
static.” 


53 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Do tell,” says I. “You can eliminate static, 
eh? What d’ye think of that! . . . He can 
eliminate static, Catty.” 

“Aw, shut up,” says Catty. “You never 
heard of static.” 

“That makes two of us,” I says. “And now, 
Mr. Pawky, if you will tell us what in tunket 
static is, then we’ll get all excited about elim¬ 
inating it.” 

He started off with a string of long words 
and outlandish stuff that didn’t mean any more 
to me than the chattering of a squirrel. It 
didn’t to Catty, either. Just because we didn’t 
understand it right off, Mr. Pawky got pro¬ 
voked and told us we were exceedingly dull. 
That’s what he said, “exceedingly dull.” 

“All right,” says Catty, “how do you make 
biscuit?” 

“I don’t know,” says he. 

“I’ll explain,” says Catty. “You take a sifter 
full of flour and put in two teaspoonfuls of soda 
and one of cream of tartar and one of salt, and 
then you put in enough lard to make it flake 
and add enough milk so it will roll out the 
way you want it to. Then you cut it with a 
biscuit cutter, and dip it in melted lard and 
bake it till it’s done. And now you can make 
biscuits.” 


54 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“I cannot/’ says Mr. Pawky. “I haven’t the 
least idea what you are talking about.” 

“Then/’ says Catty, “you are exceedingly 
dull.” 

Mr. Pawky grinned. It was the first time he 
had smiled since we got acquainted with him. 
“I see,” says he. “Maybe neither of us is so 
exceedingly dull as circumstances would seem 
to indicate.” 

“Glad’s that’s settled. Now, what’s static?” 

He explained some more, and we gradually 
got the idea that static was electricity kind of 
hanging around to interfere with radiophones, 
and it made a noise in the instrument so you 
couldn’t hear an opera singer singing three 
hundred miles away. If there wasn’t any static 
you could always hear clearly, and your radio 
outfit would be about ten times as good as it is. 
But exactly what static was we didn’t find out. 
Anyhow, it was a fine thing to eliminate. And 
Mr. Pawky could do it. 

“Is your invention worth any money?” says 
Catty. 

“Millions,” says Pawky. 

“Sufferin’ catfish!” says I. 

“And that,” says Pawky, “is why I’m in 
hiding.” 

“I’ve got it,” says Catty to me. “Somebody’s 

55 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

trying to steal his invention away from him, 
and he’s afraid. That’s it.” 

“That,” says Mr. Pawky, “is it. And the 
man’s name is Toop, and he’s one of the big¬ 
gest manufacturers of electrical appliances in 
the world.” 

“Christmas!” says I. 

“He almost had me,” says Mr. Pawky, “but 
I got away and ran.” 

“You ran the wrong way,” says Catty. “Mr. 
Toop lives about three miles from here. . . . 
Say, is it your invention you’ve got in that 
heavy box?” 

“It is my device and all the drawings that 
go with it.” 

“Then,” says Catty, “if I were you, I’d find 
some good safe place to hide.” 

“Where?” says Mr. Pawky. 

“Let’s bury it like treasure,” says I. 

“No,” says Catty, “I know where there’s a 
little cave, and we can find a place inside of it 
where we can hide the dingus so nobody’ll ever 
find it. It isn’t more than twenty minutes’ 
walk. Grab it and come on.” 

We did. It was heavy going, especially when 
we started to climb the steep hill. But finally 
we got there. You couldn’t see any cave till 
Catty showed us where it was—just a slit in 

56 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

the rocks. We squeezed through. It was kind 
of dark-like, but we lighted the lantern Catty 
had brought along. It was a rocky cave. We 
pried off a good-sized chunk of stone and 
worked out some more behind it, till we made a 
sort of closet about two feet deep. In this we 
put the box with the invention, and then we set 
back the first stone. It looked as if there wasn’t 
anything there at all. 

“There,” says Catty, “that’s safe, anyhow.” 

“We got to be getting back,” says I. 

“First we’ll show Mr. Pawky how to get his 
supper,” says Catty. Which we did. I don’t 
believe it did him a bit of good. Then we lit out 
for home, but we promised to see him the next 
day, or the day after at the very latest. And 
we did. I’ll say we saw him with a vengeance. 


57 


CHAPTER SIX 


E ARLY next morning we went over early 
and got the old pop-corn cart out of the 
barn and hauled it over to Catty’s house. It 
needed a lot of cleaning and painting, but we 
went at it, and before we were done, it looked 
as good as new. 

“Shall we try it out at the ball game this 
afternoon?” I asked. 

“Sure,” says Catty. 

“Looks like kind of a small job for two,” 
says I. 

“If we have good luck,” he says, “one of us 
will be kept busy popping all the time while the 
other sells.” 

“Hope so,” says I. “And I hope there’ll be a 
good crowd at the game.” 

“There ought to be. Most of the summer 
visitors are in their cottages and they always 
come to the games.” 

“Say,” I says, and I was surprised almost 
to death to have an idea, “I’ll bet we could 
sell a lot of pop corn Saturday nights when 
the band plays in the square. Everybody’s 

58 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

in town then from all the country around 
here.” 

‘‘Fine,” says Catty. 

We bought us a bushel of pop corn and a bag 
of salt. I smouged enough butter out of the 
ice box, which Catty says was too much like 
high finance, but he let it go for once. 

“As soon as we get our enterprises going,” 
says Catty, “we’re going to need an office.” 

“Enterprises!” says I. “That’s a regular 
word, isn’t it?”’ 

“It’s a good word,” says Catty, kind of 
severe. “We’d better figure out where we can 
have an office, too.” 

“There’s the little shack where the cobbler’s 
shop used to be. Right on Main Street, too.” 

“Fine,” says Catty. “I’ll bet we can get it 
cheap.” 

“I’ll bet,” says I, “we can get it for nothing. 
It belongs to Dad.” 

“No,” says he. “We’re in business. What¬ 
ever we have we’ve got to pay for. It wouldn’t 
be businesslike to take anything for nothing. 
Find out what your father will rent it to us 
for.” 

Dad kind of laughed when I told him about 
it, but he got the idea right off and said we could 
have it for a dollar a week, and so we agreed 

59 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

to rent it. I kind of thought Catty was getting 
the cart before the horse—renting an office be¬ 
fore we had anything to do in one, but he said 
he believed in taking care of the future. 

Well, there was a good crowd at the game 
that afternoon, about four hundred people, and 
we sold a hundred and four bags of corn. That 
was five dollars and twenty cents, and if you 
don’t count overhead, as Catty called it, our 
profit was most of the five dollars. 

“What’s overhead?” says I. 

“It’s what it costs to run your business. 
Office rent and interest and insurance and sala¬ 
ries of officials.” 

“Are you and I the officials?” 

“Yes,” says he. 

“Well, so far my salary hasn’t done any dam¬ 
age to the overhead,” says I. 

“No,” he says, “but we’ve got to figure in¬ 
terest on the money we’ve got invested. On the 
cost of the pop-corn cart.” 

“That,” says I, “would be about forty cents 
a year.” 

“It doesn’t matter how small it is. We’ve 
got to figure it just the same. And we’ve money 
invested in pop corn, and a dollar a week rent. 
It’s all got to come out of the profits. And 
we’ve got to figure depreciation, too.” 

60 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Golly,” says I, “what’s that?” 

“This pop-corn cart won’t last forever, 
will it?” 

“No.” 

“How long?” 

“Two or three years, maybe.” 

“Say three years,” he says. “That means 
we have to charge off two dollars and a half 
every year for depreciation. It’s worth that 
much less. Then, at the end of the third year, 
we’ve charged it all off.” 

“What if it lasts four years?” says I. 

“Then,” says he, “we’re in luck.” 

But about that ball game. We pushed over 
our cart and started to do business. Folks 
seemed to like the idea, but every once in a 
while somebody stopped and asked if we didn’t 
have something cold to drink, and several 
people asked if there wasn’t a place where they 
could get ice cream cones. 

“Looks,” says Catty, “like we’ve got to 
expand.” 

“Expand how?” 

“To take care of the demand for drinks and 
ice cream.” 

“Can’t lug ’em around in this cart,” says I. 

“No,” he says, “but we can build a stand. 
And we will,” he says. “We can put it up right 

61 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

next the gate, and we can sell lots of things 
besides ice cream and drinks. Make a regular 
refreshment store of it.” 

“Have to have more help,” says I. 

“Looks that way. Wish there was a game 
every day. Three days a week aren’t enough. 
But after the first week we can figure about 
how much we’ll sell. Maybe we’ll lose money 
the first week. But,” he says, “you have to pay 
for experience.” 

“Huh,” says I, “most of the stock won’t spoil. 
We can cart it down to our office the days there 
isn’t a game, and run a store there.” 

“Wee-wee,” says Catty, “you do come 
through with an idea once in a while. There’s 
quite a piece of ground alongside the office. 
Eve got a big square canvas, and we can rig 
it up for a kind of open-air ice cream parlor. 
Say, our business is growing up!” 

That was pretty good for two days, I 
thought, but Catty wasn’t satisfied. Next 
morning we were up early and started for the 
lake with the orders we had for that day. 
It wasn’t so much as the first time by a lot, 
but it was something, and on the way we 
passed Old Mister Barnes coming into town 
with a wagon full of red raspberries. Catty 
stopped. 


62 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“What you got there, Mister Barnes?” he 
says. 

“Take a look. Take a look. What ye think 
they be, brickbats to build chimneys?” 

“They look like raspberries,” says Catty. 

“They be,” says Mister Barnes, smacking his 
lips and puckering up his eyes. “That's what 
makes 'em look that way.” 

“Selling them?” asked Catty. 

“No. Jest takin' ’em for a ride in the cool 
of the mornin’.” Mister Barnes always talked 
that way, and his eyes were all wrinkled up with 
grinning at his own kind of jokes. “Berries 
has to be given rides and treated right, or they 
won’t work.” 

“Um. . . . How much a quart are you 
asking?” 

“Wa-al, when I git around to ask, I calc’late 
I'll say about a shillin’.” 

“If we were to buy twenty-four boxes, how T 
much would you call them?” 

“Dunno. If you was to take that many, I 
figger I’d have to call the doctor.” 

“We don't expect to eat them all,” says Catty. 
“But if you’ll make the price right, we’ll take 
two dozen.” 

“Cash ?” 

“Here it is,” says Catty. 

63 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Two dollars ’n a half ’ll take ’em,” says 
Mister Barnes. Everybody called him that— 
Old Mister Barnes. Eve heard he signed his 
letters that way, but I never happened to see 
one to tell for sure. 

We paid for the berries and transferred them 
into our wagon, and drove on. Mister Barnes 
sat quite a while looking after us, wondering, 
I expect, what we were up to. But we didn’t 
say. 

The easiest thing we ever did was to sell 
those berries as we delivered our orders, and 
for fifteen cents a quart. Made a nice extra 
profit. 

“There,” says Catty, “you see the idea of 
having capital. If we hadn’t had the money to 
buy those berries, we never would have made 
thirty-three and a third per cent profit on them. 
That,” says he, “was finance.” 

“Oh,” I says, “that’s how it works, is it? 
Well, next time let’s buy something for fifty 
dollars and sell it for seventy-five.” 

“I’m hoping,” says he “to buy something for 
a thousand dollars one of these days, and sell it 
for fifteen hundred. That would be making 
money, wouldn’t it?” 

“Do we call on Mr. HarbottlePawky today?” 
says I. 


64 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“We’d better. If we don’t he’ll starve, or 
poison himself,” says Catty. “Wonder what 
he’s been living on?” 

“Cookies,” says I, “we put in a couple of 
boxes.” 

“We’d better find out,” says Catty. “Seen 
all your cottages?” 

“Every one,” says I, “and business was fair, 
but nothing to brag of.” 

We drove down the shore road and hitched 
our horse. Then we cut across to the light¬ 
house. Before we went out to the island we 
kind of slunk along in the bushes to make sure 
nobody was watching for Mr. Pawky, but we 
didn’t see a soul. We couldn’t even see Mr. 
Pawky. When we were sure it was safe we 
skipped across the rocks and ran up to the 
lighthouse. 

“Hey, Mr. Pawky,” says Catty, cautious-like. 

“Who calls?” says he, from up above. 

“Us,” says Catty, which wasn’t exactly 
clear, but Mr. Pawky seemed to get the idea, for 
we heard him sort of fumbling around, and 
then he said in a complaining voice, “Well, 
why don’t you come up? Why do you stand 
down there waiting? Come up. Come up.” 

“He’s peevish,” whispered Catty. “Most 
likely he’s hungry.” 


65 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

We climbed the rickety stairs to the second 
floor and then to the third floor. Mr. Pawky 
was lying flat on his back on the blankets, 
scowling at the ceiling. 

“H’m,” says Catty, “haven't you got up yet ?” 

“I'm thinking,” says Mr. Pawky. “I always 
reason better when I lie down.” 

“Bet he’s inventing something,” says I. 

“Right,” says he. “I was. I was striving to 
invent some device which would inform me 
when food was cooked. If a lamb chop would 
only ring a bell when it’s done, instead of burn¬ 
ing up, it would be very much better than the 
way it is.” 

“Did you burn your chops ?” 

“To a cinder.” 

“Don’t see how you could do it,” says Catty. 
“Didn’t you watch them?” 

“Watch them! Of course not. I lighted the 
so-called stove and put the chops in a recep¬ 
tacle. Having no idea how much time they 
would consume in cooking, and rather fancying 
it would be several hours, I came up here to 
work out a simple problem upon which I was 
engaged. When I went down two hours later 
very little indeed was left of the chops. They 
were quite,” he paused and scowled at me as if 
it was my fault, “quite inedible.” 

66 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


‘‘No!” says Catty. “And have you haa any¬ 
thing else to eat?” 

“Some fruit out of a can and some cookies. 
They were not sufficiently filling.” 

“Well,” says I, “you’d better come down now 
while Catty and I make you some coffee and fry 
you a couple of eggs. Then you can see how 
it’s done.” 

But just then I looked out of the window, 
and there, rowing his boat up to the island as if 
he was going to get out and explore, was the 
Toop kid—the one we saw in the automobile. 

“Look,” says I, “there’s young Toop.” 

“Who?” says Mr. Pawky in a kind of a 
squawk. 

“The Toop kid,” says I. 

“Then,” says Mr. Pawky, “all is lost. He 
knows me. He will tell his parent.” 

“Not,” says Catty, “if I know myself. You 
sit tight right up here and watch me dispose of 
Toopie.” 

With that he went hotfoot down the stairs, 
and I was right at his heels. If anybody was 
going to singe that Toop kid’s pinfeathers, I 
wanted to be in on it. He made the hair on 
the back of my neck prickle. 


67 



CHAPTER SEVEN 


W HEN we got down to the ground the 
Toop kid was just pulling his boat up on 
the beach. We saw right off it was the same 
boat we sold to the man the other day, and we 
guessed it must have been Mr. Toop himself. 
That made us feel pretty good. We’d got the 
best of a millionaire, and if we could do that, 
why, there was no reason why we shouldn’t be 
millionaires ourselves if we kept at it. 

“Hey,” says Catty, “where you going?” 
“Going fishing for suckers,” says the Toop 
kid. 

“Um. . . .” says Catty, “you don’t know 
much about this part of the lake, do you? 
Haven’t been around here long?” 

“Long enough to take care of myself.” 
“Maybe so,” says Catty. “Then you know a 
crazy man built this thing.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Crazy as a loon. Dangerous.” 

“Then what are you doing here?” says he. 
We weren’t going to tell him the crazy man 
hadn’t been alive for a dozen years, so all Catty 

68 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


said was, “We happen to know how to keep 
out of his way. He’s chased more than one 
man off of this island with an ax.” And that 
was true, too. Catty turned to me. “You’re 
keeping a fine watch, Wee-wee. Get over 
there and hide in the bushes, and keep your 
eye peeled.” 

“I knew he had some kind of a scheme he 
didn’t have time to tell me, and that I would 
have to catch on to, so I hopped across and hid 
where I could watch him and hear most he said. 

“You can always tell if the crazy man’s com¬ 
ing,” Catty says, because he never moves 
around without whistling all the time, loud as 
anything, and sometimes he’d stop whistling to 
screech like he was being pulled to pieces.” 

“Aw, go on,” says Toop, “you’re trying to 
string me. I’m going up to look at that light¬ 
house, and you can’t stop me. You don’t own 
this lake. My father owns more of it than 
anybody else. I guess I can do about as I want 
to around here.” 

“No skin off my nose,” says Catty. “You 
can scratch the looney on the back if you want 
to. . . . Listen,” he says, all of a sudden. 

I caught on, and whistled, and kept it up, get¬ 
ting louder and louder, until I thought it was 
about time for a holler. Well, sir, I let out a 

69 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

shriek you could have heard a mile. It was 
enough to curl the hair on the back of your 
neck. 

“What’s that?” says Toop, kind of back¬ 
ing off. 

“What do you think it is?” says Catty. “A 
mouse.” 

At that I let out another yowl, and you should 
have seen Toop go away from there. He 
jumped into his boat and started thrashing the 
water with the oars till it got foamy. I never 
saw anybody row quite so frantic in my life. 
And he kept it up. I guess he thought our 
crazy man was going to swim out and catch 
him. 

“That was easy enough,” says Catty, “but 
he’s going to find out the crazy man’s been 
dead for years, and then he’ll come back to find 
out why we played a trick on him.” 

“I don’t know,” says I. “Once a fellow gets 
scared of a place, he always feels creepy about 
it. Maybe he knows there isn’t anything there 
to hurt him, but he can’t get rid of the idea he’d 
rather be some place else.” 

“Maybe so,” says Catty. “I hope so, any¬ 
how. Let’s go up and see Harbottle.” 

So we climbed the lighthouse again, and this 
time we found Harbottle on the floor with a 

70 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


lot of riggings around him—electric-looking 
things, and he was fussing with them and pet¬ 
ting them and acting like they were his favorite 
kitten. 

“What’s all that?” says I. 

“Radio outfit,” says he. “A first-class one 
—one of the very best.” 

“Got your patent dingus on it ?” says I. 

“It has,” says he, “but you can’t see it.” 

“Why?” 

“Because,” he says with a kind of a sly smile, 
“I’ve got it out of sight.” 

“What are you going to do with the thing?” 
says I. 

“Rig it up,” he says. “I’m lonesome here. 
When I put this up I’ll have company all 
the time, and besides, I can carry on my 
experiments. 

“Have to have wires strung up outside, don’t 
you?” Catty asked 

“Yes, but I can conceal them so nobody will 
see them. That is the easiest part of it. I’ll 
do that to-night after dark.” 

“And you can hear things from Washington 
and Chicago and Pittsburgh over that?” 

“It’s a powerful instrument. I can hear a 
very great distance. When I have it installed 
you may listen. You can hear music and lec- 

71 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


tures and opera—anything you want. J\nd 
there will be no interference by static. This,” 
says he, “is the only radio outfit in the world 
with which static cannot interfere.” 

“Fine,” says I. “When do we hear the first 
entertainment?” 

“Fll be ready to-morrow night, if you care 
to come.” 

“And if Mr. Toop doesn’t find you. And if 
you don’t starve to death.” 

He stopped tinkering and looked from one to 
the other of us for a minute. I do believe he 
had forgotten all about being a fugitive and 
how he was hiding there. He’d gotten so inter¬ 
ested in his electrical doodads that you could 
have shot a gun under his nose and he wouldn’t 
have heard it. 

“True,” says he. “By the way, how did you 
dispose of the intruder—the boy you said was 
coming?” 

“Scared him off,” said Catty. 

“I wish,” said Harbottle, “that you would 
scare off his father, too.” 

“That wouldn’t be so easy,” says Catty. 
“Well, we’ll feed you up and be on our way 
back. Got lots of work to do. We’ll come out 
to-morrow sometime. You keep out of sight.” 

“I shall. I shall be occupied with my work. 

72 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


I doubt if I step outside this building during 
the day.” 

“That’s best,” says Catty. “Good-by.” 

“Have her fixed up so we can hear a lecture 
to-morrow,” says I. 

“I shall,” says he. “Good afternoon.” 

We went back and got our wagon and drove 
off toward home. It was just at the edge of 
town that we met a man, and it kind of startled 
me, because it was one of the two men who 
were chasing Harbottle Pawky the first time 
we saw him. I nudged Catty. 

“Harbottle isn’t safe yet,” says I. 

“You bet he isn’t,” says Catty. “They’ll 
never give up trying to grab that invention 
of his.” 

“What’ll he do?” says I. 

“That’s more than I can say. That man 
wants to talk to us. . . . Whoa.” 

We drew up and the man came and leaned 
his elbow on the wheel. “Seen a funny-looking 
little man with big glasses and a box under his 
arm?” he asked. 

“Name of Jones?” says Catty. 

“No, name of Harbottle Pawky,” says the 
man. 

“Funny name,” says Catty. 

The man looked at us a minute. “Say,” he 

73 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

i 

says, “aren't you the boys we met the other 
day—the ones who said they saw our man in 
the bank?" 

“Didn’t say anything about your man," says 
Catty. “We told you we saw a man in the bank 
with big tortoise-rimmed glasses. We did." 

“Huh," says the man. “He wasn’t the one. 
But we know our man got off the train here, 
and we’re sure he took this road out of town. 
I’ve traced him half-way to the lake. Kind of 
a joke on him, at that," he says and grinned. 
“Say, if you see anything of him—the man 
with the specs—tell me and there's five dollars 
in it." 

“Where will I find you?" says Catty. 

“Either at the hotel or out at Mr. Toop’s 
house. You know Mr. Toop at the lake." 

“Know where he lives," says Catty. 

“Don’t forget. Five dollars if you see my 
man." 

“You must want to find him badly," says 
Catty. 

“I do," says the man, and he went off up the 
road looking pretty anxious. I guess Mr. Toop 
wasn’t pleased with him for losing sight of 
Harbottle, and Mr. Toop looked like a man who 
could be pretty mean if something happened he 
didn’t like. 


74 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Anyhow/' says Catty to me, “we know 
they’re still hanging around looking for Pawky. 
That ’ll make us more careful.” 

“I hope it doesn’t get us into any trouble. I 
don’t like trouble. There’s something about 
trouble that fairly makes me sick. No, sir. 
There may be folks that like danger and adven¬ 
ture, but I’m not one. What I want is just to 
have everything run along smooth all the 
time.” 

“Fiddlesticks,” says Catty. “I’ll bet we get a 
good exciting adventure out of this yet.” 

“I hope you lose your bet,” says I. “Being a 
financier is exciting enough for me.” 

“All right,” says he, “let’s be financiers the 
rest of the day. We haven’t made enough 
money to wad a gun with.” 

“Fine,” I says, “you think up how to do it, 
and I’ll take care of the rough work, like carry¬ 
ing the money to the bank.” 

We made the old nag mog along as fast as 
he would go, which wasn’t very fast, and Catty 
says, “Suppose we were pursued by wolves 
now.” 

“Guess the wolves wouldn’t get tired out 
chasing us,” says I. “If I was a wolf I’d be 
ashamed to run after this horse. I’d turn 
around and back after him.” 

75 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Huh,” says Catty, “you haven’t any 
imagination.” 

“No,” says I, “not enough to make me think 
we’re going more than two miles an hour. Try 
something easier.” 

That ended that. Catty would have had me 
all lathered up with excitement if he could, 
but he couldn’t. Not that time. If I hadn’t sat 
on it then and there, he’d have had wolves all 
around us, and more than likely he’d have 
thrown me out to feed them while he escaped. 
But we had plenty of excitement without imag¬ 
ining wolves, for just as we got to the edge of 
town we heard the fire whistle on the water¬ 
works hollering for all it was worth. 

We don’t have enough fires in our town so 
that they get to be common. “Let’s tie the 
horse to a tree and run,” says I, “We can get 
there twice as fast.” That’s how much I 
thought of our nag. But Catty wouldn’t. He 
said it would be undignified for financiers. I 
knew there would be some kind of drawback to 
being those things. 

But we got there almost in time. The hose 
cart was just pulling up to Bartlett’s hardware 
store when we turned the corner. It was kind 
of late, on account of the fire chief having to 
hunt up his helmet. I heard him tell Newt 

76 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Bunker one of his kids had it full of water and 
was keeping pollywogs in it. 

It wasn’t much of a fire, mostly smoke, but 
the firemen got in their best licks just the same. 
They squirted the store full of water and 
chopped holes in the roof and busted the win¬ 
dows and cut up pretty rough all around. And 
they didn’t want to quit when Bartlett came 
tearing around and said it was out and that 
they did more damage than seven fires. They 
were going to keep right on squirting their 
hoses until Bartlett went and got his double- 
barreled shotgun and said if they didn’t vamoose 
he’d fill them full of bird shot. Then they got 
out, but they were pretty mad. The chief said 
the next time Bartlett had a fire he could put it 
out himself, and Bartlett hollered back that he’d 
rather trust a fire in his store any day than that 
fire company. So everybody was happy and 
having a good time. 

Folks gathered around Bartlett and asked 
him what his loss was and how much insurance 
he had, and he said he didn’t have any insur¬ 
ance because who in tunket would expect a 
hardware store to burn, and he didn’t guess his 
loss would be any more than he’d have spent for 
insurance policies all these years. 

Catty and I got around behind and went 

77 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


through the back door to see for ourselves how 
much damage had been done. We examined 
things pretty careful. Showcases were busted 
and everything was sopping wet. Nail kegs 
were half full of water and the whole outfit 
looked like Noah must have found things on 
earth after he landed out of the ark. There 
was one show case all full of jackknives and 
fishing reels and compasses and flash lights 
and what not. Everything looked to me like 
it was ruined. By morning it would be so rusty 
nothing would be worth a cent—that’s how it 
looked to me. 

Catty stood and stared around, and then he 
says to me, “Wee-wee, there ought to be some 
way for us to make money out of this.” 

“How?” says I. 

“Wait till morning,” says he, “things ’ll look 
worse then.” 

“All right,” I says, “I’ve had enough finan¬ 
ciering for one day, anyhow.” 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


N EXT morning Catty was around bright 
and early. He got me out almost before 
I had time to eat breakfast. 

“Come on,” says he, “we’ve got to make a 
deal. Hope Mr. Bartlett’s feeling kind of mad 
to-day.” 

“Why?” 

“Because,” says he, “we can strike a better 
bargain. You can always get the best of a man 
when he’s mad.” 

Well, Bartlett was mad. When we got to the 
store, he was standing in the middle of it men¬ 
tioning his opinion of the fire company, and of 
the weather, and of business in general, and 
then he branched off on to the Democratic party 
and the tariff and said a few neat things about 
England and prohibition and farming, and then 
he wound up by whaling into the Bolsheviki. 
Catty waited for him to finish, and then he 
says: 

“Mr. Bartlett, what are you going to with 
what’s left of your stock.” 

“If 'twan’t fer gittin’ arrested,” says Bart- 

79 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

lett, “I’d stack dynamite under it and touch her 
off. . . . What be I goin’ to do with it ? What 
d’ye think I be? Eat it? Hain’t nothin’ to do 
but sell it fer what it’ll fetch.” 

“Thought maybe you’d do that. Say, those 
knives look about ruined.” 

“They be,” says Bartlett, “Rust ’ll be eatin’ 
into ’em like a mouse into cheese. And them 
other things! Gee-whillikins, but the whole kit 
and bilin’ hain’t wuth enough to buy a day’s 
feed fer a muskeeter.” 

“That’s my idea,” says Catty. 

“Who in tunket asked you to have an idea?” 
says Mr. Bartlett. 

“What’ll you take for that case full of junk, 
as it stands, lock, stock, and barrel ? All 
of it.” 

“What you want to know fer?” 

“Might buy it if it was cheap enough,” says 
Catty. 

“Huh. You git out of here ’fore I lose my 
temper.” 

“Give you twenty-five dollars,” says Catty, 
and waved the money at him. 

“You git out. Git out now, whilst ye kin 
walk out.” 

“Give you thirty,” says Catty. 

Mr. Bartlett turned and made a kind of 

80 


what’ll you take for that caseful of junk, as it stands, lock, stock, and barrel? all of it! 












f 







CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


pounce toward us and shook his fist. “Sell it 
to ye for fifty dollars,” he bellowed. “Fifty. 
Now shet up and git out.” 

“Here’s your fifty,” says Catty. 

Well Mr. Bartlett turned kind of yaller and 
goggled and opened his mouth and shut it like 
a goldfish. 

“Here’s your fifty,” says Catty. 

“Say, I hain’t no idea what’s in that case.” 

“It doesn’t matter now,” says Catty, “you’ve 
sold it to us.” 

He pushed the money into Bartlett’s hand, 
and walked over to the case. “You stay here,” 
says he, “and begin packing the stuff so we can 
carry it. I’ll go get the rig.” 

Bartlett he stood kind of speechless till Catty 
was out of the door. Then he rushed at me. 
“Hey, you, git away from there. Leave them 
things alone.” 

“They belong to us,” says I, my mad kind of 
rising. “You made your proposition. Fifty 
dollars was what you said, and we paid the 
money, and you’ve got it in your hand. Maybe 
we’re cheated, for all I know. But the deal’s 
made. You can’t crawl out of it any more than 
we can. Anyhow, this stuff is paid for and it’s 
ours.” 

He stopped and scowled. 

81 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Want me to go out and tell folks how you 
backed out of a bargain?” says I. 

Well, that finished him, because he was al¬ 
ways bragging around that his word was as 
good as his bond, and that when he said a thing 
he stood by it. 

Catty came back in twenty minutes with the 
horse and wagon, and two men. We carried 
out the case and piled it on the wagon and drove 
it down to our office—the one that used to be the 
cobbler’s shop. There we unloaded it and the 
men lugged it inside. 

“Now,” says Catty, “we’ll take stock.” 

We did. It was quite a job. Here’s a list of 
what we had bought: 

58 jackknives in a cloth case 

6 hunting knives 

3 fish knives 

9 reels 

3 steel fishrods 

2 compasses 

2 camp axes 

7 flash lights 

1 tray of assorted fishhooks 

1 tray assorted sinkers 

11 artificial baits 

18 jackknives in boxes 

2 boxes fishlines 


82 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

1 pedometer 

2 collapsible drinking cups 

1 showcase with top glass cracked. 

“There,” says I, “that’s what we’ve got. 
Now what in tunket are we going to do 
with it?” 

“Sell it,” says Catty. 

“How ?” says I. 

“First,” says he, “we’ll have to doctor it up 
a little.” 

“Quite a lot more than a little,” says I. “It 
looks now, most of it, as if the cat had dragged 
it in.” 

It did, too. All the nickel was smoked and 
rusted up and messy-looking. The pasteboard 
boxes with things in them were a regular pulp. 
If I’d been passing and seen the whole outfit, 
I don’t believe I’d have given a nickel for it. 
But Catty was all excited. He said we’d made 
they buy of our lives, and that we were going 
to make a killing, as he called it. 

We got to work with rags and kerosene oil 
and polish and worked like tunket, and it would 
surprise you the difference it made. It was a 
lot of nuisance rubbing and shining, but you 
wouldn’t believe how little real damage there 
was. Why, the nickel-plated flash lights looked 
even better than new. The hunting knives 

83 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


weren’t hurt at all, except the leather cases 
were stained. The fishlines were wet, but what 
good is a fishline if it hurts it to get wet? That’s 
what they’re for. We had to take the reels all 
to pieces and oil them and tinker them—and 
they were as good as new. Why, honest to 
goodness, about five hours’ work fixed every 
single thing so you could hardly tell it had ever 
been in a fire. 

“But,” says I, “how are you going to sell 
them?” 

“You watch,” says he. * “You’re a pretty 
good fist at printing, aren’t you?” 

“So folks say when they want to be nice,” 
I says. 

“Well, you get a couple of pieces of white 
cloth about five feet by three and some black 
paint and a brush,” he says. “You can buy the 
cloth, but you can borrow the paint and brush 
out at Dad’s mill.” 

I scurried off to get them, and when I came 
back he had Dick Plass, the odd-job man, put¬ 
ting a new plate of glass in the showcase. He’d 
got some black cloth and was lining the case 
inside, and rubbing it up with varnish, so that 
a body would have thought it just came from 
the factory. 

“Ready?” says Catty. 

84 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Shoot,” says I. 

“Paint two signs,” he says. “Let’s see— 
what had we better have on ’em? Um. . . . 
I’ve got it. We can get Mose White to play 
his banjo and sing for a dollar. He’ll be tickled 
to death.” 

“What’s he got to do with it?” 

“He’s to get the crowd together,” says Catty. 
“You can’t sell things to folks unless you get 
folks to sell things to.” 

“That sounds like sense,” says I. 

“Then print your signs to read, “Free show. 
Eight o’clock sharp. In the square.” 

“That all?” 

“Yes.” 

“Nothing about bargains?” 

“Not a word.” 

“Don’t see any sense in it,” says I. 

“Wait and see,” he says. “You paint and 
I’ll do the thinking.” 

“If you think as well as I paint,” I says, 
“we’ll do pretty well.” 

It didn’t take me half an hour to fix up the 
signs. Then we tied them on our horse, one on 
each side of him. We had to make a trip to the 
lake with supplies to the cottages, and off we 
went after we locked our office, with the signs 
hung out. As we went up the street you could 

85 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

see folks staring at us, and a lot hollered after 
us to know what was going to happen. But 
Catty told me not to answer any questions. 

“Get ’em all worked up with curiosity,” 
says he. 

We made our calls and stopped a second to 
see Harbottle Pawky, who seemed to be all 
right and comfortable. It looked like he didn’t 
need to eat so long as he could tinker with his 
radio fixings. On the road we met the Toop 
boy in his automobile. He looked us over and 
stopped his car and says, “Hey, what you rubes 
up to now ?” 

“We’re planning to skin some of you city 
greenhorns,” says Catty. “Come in to-night 
and fetch your skin with you.” 

“Don’t get fresh with me,” says Toop. 

“If I had time,” says Catty, “I’d love to sit 
and talk back and forth with you. It amuses 
Wee-wee, and he’s hard to amuse. He laughs 
fit to split every time he sees you.” 

“For two cents,” says Toop, “I’d get down 
and crack you in the eye.” 

“It ’ud be worth it,” says Catty, “but I’m 
busy to-day. I’m figuring on giving you a good 
licking before the summer’s over, though. Bear 
it in mind. It’ll give you something to think 
about besides how important you are. Say, you 

86 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


are kind of important, aren’t you ? A body can 
tell it just to look at you.” 

“I'm important enough to get you into a lot 
of trouble if you go monkeying around me,” 
says Toop. 

“Your pa’s rich, isn’t he?” 

“Richer than anybody in this jerkwater 
town.” 

“You’d think, then,” says Catty, kind of 
quiet, “that he could have afforded to have you 
taught manners, then.” 

He clucked to our horse and we went away, 
leaving young Toop to think up some answer 
to that. He hadn’t thought one up when we 
turned the next corner. 

We got back into town and drove up and 
down the streets for a couple of hours, so every¬ 
body would be sure to see the signs, and I guess 
everybody did. Then we got hold of Mose 
White and made a bargain with him to be on 
hand at eight o’clock sharp with his banjo. 

“How are you going to sell anything?” says I. 

“Out of the wagon,” says Catty. 

“No light,” says I. 

“We’ll hang a lot of Chinese lanterns,” he 
says. “You’ve got some at your house from 
that ice cream sociable the Ladies’ Aid had on 
your lawn.” 


87 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Fine,” says I. “We can be rigging them on 
the wagon.” 

Well, we fixed up a framework to hang them 
on, and some boards for counters, and a place 
for Mose to sit and play and sing. 

“The kids ’ll guy the life out of us,” says I. 

“Let them,” says Catty. “All they’ll get out 
of it will be fun; you and I’ll be making money.” 

That was a pretty sensible way to look at it, 
I thought, so I didn’t say any more. But I was 
wondering just how Catty was going to manage 
his sale. As it turned out I pretty nearly never 
found out, and there pretty nearly wasn’t any 
sale, and Catty and I almost got into about the 
excitingest mess of our bright young lives. Oh, 
that was some hour from seven till eight. It 
was some hour. You can have the next one 
that comes along like it, for I don’t want it. 


88 


CHAPTER NINE 


AS I say, we were on our way back to pull 
l\. off Catty’s sale when we met the Toop 
kid and sassed back and forth with him. Then 
we drove on maybe a quarter of a mile, talking 
about what was going to happen in town to¬ 
night, and me trying to prove to Catty that 
we’d have to eat our jackknives to get rid of 
them. We were just on top of Hay Hill when 
all of a sudden Catty hollered “Whoa” at the 
horse and stopped. 

“What ails you?” says I, “see a snake?” 

“Saw something,” says he, “watch the old 
sporting camp.” 

The old sporting camp was a kind of log 
shack that some hunters built five or six years 
back and then never came back to. Nobody 
used it, and I never saw anybody around it 
except folks who passed kind of usual. You 
could see a corner of it sticking out of the 
underbrush from the top of the hill, and I 
looked as Catty told me to. At first I didn’t 
see anything, but then I did see somebody come 
to the door and throw something out. 

89 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Somebody’s there,” says I. 

“Sure,” says he, “and living there right 

along.” 

“How do you know ?” says I. 

“Huh,” he says, “what did that fellow throw 
out of the door?” 

“How should I know?” says I. 

“Use your head,” says he. “Notice the mo¬ 
tion. It was dishwater. You never saw any¬ 
body come to a door and throw out anything 
with that kind of a scooping motion when it 
wasn’t dishwater.” 

“That’s right,” says I. 

“And that means,” says he, “that they’re liv¬ 
ing there.” 

“Looks that way.” 

“Got to be that way. They had to cook to 
eat. Had to heat water to wash dishes. If 
they’d just stopped for lunch they wouldn’t 
have done either. No, sir, somebody’s grabbed 
the old camp, and they’re living there.” 

“What of it?” says I. 

“Well,” says he, “being mixed up like we are 
with Harbottle Pawky, it’s our business to in¬ 
vestigate everything suspicious that we see. 
Isn’t it? Can’t tell what might be happening. 
It doesn’t do any harm to investigate fifty sus¬ 
picious things that turn out to be nothing at all, 

90 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


but it does do a lot of damage to neglect to look 
into one suspicious thing that turns out to be 
dangerous. Common sense, isn’t it?” 

“Maybe,” says I, “but it’s a good way to get 
our heads knocked together.” 

“For anybody with the kind of head you’ve 
got,” says he, “you do a mighty lot of worrying 
about it. You sit here and keep your head safe 
while I go see.” 

“No,” says I, “I’ll go along. I know we 
ought not to, but if you’re bound and deter¬ 
mined I’ll mog along. You always get into 
trouble and it takes a good, steady person like 
me to haul you out again.” 

“Huh,” says he, “come along then—for any 
reason you want to, but be quick about it.” 

We tied our horse, though he didn’t need it 
specially. But it was a kind of compliment to 
him to fasten him like he was a regular horse, 
so we did it. It might have hurt his feelings if 
we’d just let him stand, though the only way 
he’d have shown he was hurt would be to go 
slower than ever. We tied him and called his 
attention to it, but he didn’t say thank you. I 
guess he was asleep before we got the halter 
fastened. Then we ducked off the road and 
headed for the camp. 

The house was just a log shack about 

91 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

eighteen by twelve with a door in the front end 
and a window on each of the other sides. It 
was set right in the thick of the woods, with a 
path leading up from the spring, and witch 
hopple growing close all around except in front. 
Catty and I sneaked down through the thick of 
it, and as he went ahead I got the worst of it. 
The second fellow going through that kind of 
stuff always does. The man ahead pushes aside 
branches and then lets them go just in time to 
snap the behind fellow on the nose. Just like 
snapping him with a whip. I mentioned it, but 
Catty said he did it to keep me awake. It took 
us five minutes to get close to the camp, and 
then we got pretty cautious and crawled. 

Regular Indian stuff! Catty had forgotten 
all about his sale by this time, and I was so 
scairt I forgot it, too. But there we were, get¬ 
ting closer every minute, and the minute after 
that we shoved our noses right against the logs 
of the shack. Catty reared up and peeked 
through the window. Then he sat down sud¬ 
den and grabbed me by the arm. 

“For cat’s sake, look!” says he. 

Being curious is worse than being afraid, so 
I got up and took me a look. Well, I was con¬ 
siderably surprised, for there was Mr. Toop as 
big as life and three times as natural. And 

92 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

there were two men with him. One of them 
was the biggest of the men we had seen chasing 
Harbottle Pawky. It kind of took my breath 
away to see a big millionaire like Toop hiding in 
that shanty with those men. I stood there and 
stared and listened, and Catty got up and lis¬ 
tened, too. It was a good thing we did, for we 
found out more than we ever could have found 
out from Harbottle himself. 

“I tell you,” says Mr. Toop, “the man is in 
this neighborhood. He got off the train in 
town here, and walked out toward the lake. 
He hasn’t been seen in any town within twenty 
miles of here in any direction. He’s hiding, and 
I believe he’s hiding some place close to here.” 

“You must be mistaken, Mr. Toop,” says the 
big man. “You know Pawky as well as I do, 
and he couldn’t live alone in the woods a day. 
He’s the most helpless human being I ever 
encountered.” 

“Then,” says Mr. Toop. “he’s got help. 
Somebody is hiding him. Maybe he’s told some 
cock-and-bull story and got a wooden-headed 
rube to hide him in his attic.” 

“I don’t believe it. He passed this way, all 
right, but he was going away fast. We were 
right behind him, and all we saw was a couple 
of boys.” 


93 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“You didn’t tell me that,” says Mr. Toop. 

“I didn’t think it was important,” says the 
man. 

“Everything is important,” says Mr. Toop, 
“in a case like this, where hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of dollars are at stake.” 

That made me whistle to myself. Old Har- 
bottle and his invention were pretty valuable, 
according to Mr. Toop’s tale, and he ought to 
know. 

“Did you question the boys?” he asked. 

“Yes, but they didn’t know anything.” 

“H’m, what boys were they ? Have you seen 
them since ?” 

“Often. They drive an old horse out to the 
lake about every day.” 

“Um. . . . Those boys. Um. . . . Pretty 
sharp kids, those. Sure you questioned them 
sharply?” 

“The best I could.” 

“Well, from what I learn, they got a little the 
best of me in a business deal,” he said and kind 
of chuckled, “and a kid that can do that to me 
is quite considerable of a kid. If those are the 
youngsters, they’ll bear watching. I’ve a feel¬ 
ing they’re mixed up in this. I had the second 
you told me who they were. Yes, sir, if we keep 
our eyes on those boys without letting them 

94 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


know it, we’ll come to Harbottle Pawky if he’s 
hidden in this part of the country. You see to 
it without fail. Don’t let those boys get out of 
sight of some of our men for a minute.” 

I looked at Catty and Catty looked at me. 
That was a pretty note. Here we were to be 
spied on every second. We wouldn’t be able to 
do a thing, and every fellow has things he wants 
to do without some grown man watching, and 
you can bet on it. But there was Pawky on our 
hands. If we were watched, how could we get 
to see him and take him food ? And if we didn’t 
he’d starve. It was a pretty pickle. 

“Wherever Pawky is,” says Toop, “his 
perfected receiving instrument is with him. He 
wouldn’t trust it to a safety deposit vault. 
He hasn’t much sense in a business way, but 
he does know enough to hang tight to that 
invention.” 

“How did he get it away from you when you 
had him and it tight?” 

“I don’t know. I’d have bought the whole 
caboodle for a couple of thousand, and it would 
have been worth a million to me in a year. I 
don’t believe he cares much for money. All he 
is interested in is tinkering with wireless. But 
he’s all heated up over anything he does. Gets 
sort of in love with it, I guess. Just when I 

95 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


thought I had him—he was locked in a room 
with his box—he got suspicious or jealous or 
something, and out of a window he got and 
down the fire escape. We discovered it within 
ten minutes and were after him, but that’s the 
last we’ve seen of him.” 

“Funny thing he should have run right up 
here where you are,” says the man. 

“It was kind of funny. He ran into the sta¬ 
tion and says to the ticket agent, ‘Sir, I want to 
get on the first train.’ ‘For where?’ says the 
ticket agent. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least,’ 
says Pawky, ‘so long as it goes away from here 
rapidly.’ . . . Well, the train north was the 
first one out and he got on it. What induced 
him to get off here I can’t imagine, unless it 
was our luck.” 

“We haven’t had much luck since he did get 
off.” 

“Might have had,” says Mr. Toop, “if you’d 
told me about those boys the way you should 
have. But we’ll remedy that now. Get a man 
on them to-night, and never let them out of 
sight a minute.” 

“That’s that,” says the big man. 

Well, I had kind of stuck my toes between 
two logs to look in and listen better, and the bark 
on that log picked out just that second to peel 

96 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


and let me slip. My nose went kerspang against 
the window and like to busted the glass. In a 
jerk those three men were on their feet, startled, 
but motionless. It was lucky they didn’t move 
—and it was lucky Catty knew that camp as 
well as he did. He and I had been past there 
more than once, and stopped, too. 

My chin had hardly hit the glass then Catty 
was gone. 

“Quick,” says he, “the door!” 

I got what he meant in a second. That’s 
what it is to be used to working with a person 
so well you know what he’s thinking about al¬ 
most as soon as he begins to think it. I’ve got 
to know how Catty’s mind works. I remem¬ 
bered that door and how it was made. There 
were two doors, one that opened inward, like 
most doors do, and a second door, a sort of 
winter door that was used just when the camp 
was left. This one opened outward. It was a 
plank door, and there was a bar that let down 
and then padlocked so folks prowling around 
couldn’t break into the camp when the hunters 
were away. It was a good idea. I’ve approved 
of it ever since that evening. 

Well, Catty got to that door before the men 
inside had made up their minds they really 
ought to do something. He banged it shut, and 

97 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

I was right at his side. The second he banged 
it, I slammed the bar into the slots, and we had 
them tight—for a minute. 

But the thing was rotten and a couple of 
heaves would let them out. I was for legging 
it toward the horse, but, as Catty explained 
later, that would have been a rotten idea. They 
would have seen who it was, recognized our 
horse, and the fat would have been in the fire. 
No, Catty thought quicker than I did. 

“The loft,” says he. “I saw the window was 
busted in.” 

The loft was in the peak of the shanty. It 
was just boards laid on the roof braces, and 
there was a window up in the angle for ven¬ 
tilation, I guess. Catty made for the back of 
the shack where the window was, and I after 
him. 

The men were making a thundering racket 
trying to knock the door ofif the hinges, so they 
weren’t likely to hear us, and the chinking was 
out from between the logs so we could climb it 
like we were squirrels. Up we went and into 
that loft we ducked, and not a minute too soon, 
for about the time we went in, they went out. 
One of them ran around each side of the house 
—but we weren’t there to see. It was kind of 
funny, our being inside while they were outside. 

98 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Sort of joke on them, and the way it looked to 
me, we were in about the safest place we could 
be. They’d never think of looking up there for 
us. Who would suspect that anybody trying to 
get away from them would crawl right into the 
shanty ? 

So Catty and I crouched there maybe ten 
minutes while they rampaged around the 
woods. Then they came back. 

“Maybe it was some animal,” says Mr. Toop. 

“There weren’t any clear tracks,” says the 
big man, “but what there were looked human.” 

“But who could have been spying on us? 
Why would anybody have spied on us ?” 

“Might have been Harbottle Pawky him¬ 
self,” says the man. “If he’s hiding around, 
maybe he’s watching you.” 

“Um. . . .” says Mr. Toop kind of thought¬ 
ful, “more likely it was those kids. If they 
know about him, and are helping him to hide, 
it would be just like them to make a sort of 
game out of spying on us. . . . By Jove, if I 
thought so!” His face got pretty mean and 
disagreeable, and I had a sinking feeling in the 
pit of my stomach. Right off I began to wish 
I was some place else. I wanted to go and sell 
jackknives, but there was a fine chance! We 
didn’t dare take a good deep breath. 

99 


CHAPTER TEN 


I LOOKED at my watch and showed it to 
Catty. He scowled, and I says to myself, 
“This is a night when there won’t be any sale,” 
because we wanted to get it going by eight 
o’clock and it was after seven now. From the 
way it looked, those men were going to stay 
down there and talk for hours, and as long as 
they stayed we had to stay, too. There was 
nothing between us and them but some loose 
inch boards, and I was afraid to breathe. 

“I tell you it was some human being,” says 
Toop, “and if it was a human being he was 
spying, and if he was spying he had a reason 
for it. The only reason to spy on us would be 
Pawky. So it is safe to say he is somewhere 
around.” 

Mr. Toop could reason all right. Probably 
that’s how he got to be a millionaire. I made up 
my mind I’d learn to reason things out, but then 
I sort of thought it over and got discouraged. 
You can’t dig very well without a shovel. Then 
I felt better again, because it seemed to me that 
if a man with a head like Mr. Toop’s could 

100 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


make a million, a boy with a head like mine 
ought to make anyhow fifty thousand, and that 
would be plenty. I’d be satisfied with fifty 
thousand, anyhow. 

It turned out we were going to have luck for 
once, for Mr. Toop says, “Well, men, I’ve got 
to go home. Both of you make for town and 
get track of those kids. If you get a chance, 
question them. Pin them down.” 

“Just as you say,” says the big man, and Mr. 
Toop got up and went to the door. Then I 
thought of our horse and wagon, right out in 
the road. When those men went to town they 
would be sure to go down the road right past 
it, and then they’d know for sure we had been 
the ones who spied on them in the camp. I 
didn’t like the idea of that at all, but it couldn’t 
be helped. As long as we stayed where we were 
there wasn’t much danger of our being found, 
unless we went to sleep and snored. 

In another minute the three of them were out¬ 
side. We waited a bit, and then we climbed 
down ourselves. There was just one chance of 
our getting to the horse and out of the way be¬ 
fore they reached the road, and that was that 
they walked slow along the path and talked, 
while we cut straight across through the under¬ 
brush. We took a chance on it, and luck was 

101 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

with us again. We got to the horse and piled 
in the wagon before they came out of the woods. 

It was quite a job of getting old Maude S. 
started, but we stirred him up and poked him 
in the ribs until he woke up and kind of limped 
along like he was mad at the world. Of course 
his name wasn’t Maude S. I just call him that 
on account of his speed. Maude S. was a race 
horse a good many years ago, that Eve heard 
Dad talk about. 

We kited for town as fast as we could man¬ 
age and made right for my house. There we 
finished decorating the wagon and then we 
drove over and got Mose White and his banjo. 
Then we lighted our Chinese lanterns and 
started out for the square to do business. We 
had loaded in all our knives and other stock, so 
that when we got to the square we were ready 
to do business. There we stopped, and Catty 
says to Mose, “Now, Mose, whang the music 
box and give ’em a song.” 

Mose started to dingle the banjo and he let 
loose a song at the same time. People began 
to stop and stare at the wagon, and then they 
stayed to listen to Mose. By the time his first 
song was over there were maybe twenty folks 
there. By the time he finished the second there 
were fifty, and by the time he got through with 

102 


i 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

the third there were a hundred. Then Catty 
got up and make a kind of a bow and says, 

“Ladies and gentlemen. This is a free enter¬ 
tainment. It doesn’t cost you a cent. We 
aren’t even going to take up a collection. You 
can stay as long as you like and listen all you 
like, and we hope you have a good time.” He 
stopped and took a jackknife out of his pocket 
and began to whittle. It was a good knife and 
the way he made the shavings fly was a caution. 
“There’s nothing like a good knife,” says he. 
“Nothing in the world so useful. The trouble 
with good knives, though, is that they cost too 
much. Why, a knife like this one will cost any¬ 
body two dollars and a half. It’s a regular two- 
dollar-and-a-half knife.” He stopped and 
looked down at old Mister Pringle. “Want to 
look at it ?” he asked. 

Mr. Pringle wanted to look. He took it in 
his hand and turned it over and over, and 
other folks crowded around as if they never 
saw a jackknife in their lives before. He 
opened the blades and tried the edge on his 
thumb. 

“Good knife,” says he. “Calc’late it’s wuth 
two-fifty.” 

“Every cent of it,” says Catty. “That’s the 
regular retail price. Now, Mr. Pringle, if you 

103 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

could buy a knife like that for a dollar, what 
would you think?” 

“I’d think it was a bargain,” says Mr. 
Pringle. 

“You’d kind of feel as if you were taking 
advantage of me if you bought that knife from 
me for a dollar, wouldn’t you—you being a 
grown man and me a boy?” 

“I calc’late I’d kind of feel so ” says Mr. 
Pringle. 

“But it always feels good to get the best of 
anybody in a trade. It does to me. What’ll 
you offer me for that knife?” 

“Dollar,” says Mr. Pringle, and the crowd 
laughed. 

“It’s your knife,” says Catty, “pass up the 
money.” 

Then the crowd laughed the other way, but 
Mr. Pringle took a dollar bill out of his pocket 
and handed it up. 

“Now,” says Catty, “I’ve got a few more 
knives like that, some better, but all as good. 
Genuine two-and-a-half knives, and you folks 
can have them for a dollar a knife—while they 
last. Here—here’s a tray of them. Look ’em 
over. Handle ’em. Open ’em up. Only a dol¬ 
lar apiece. Every knife you buy you make a 
dollar and a half.” 


104 




CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Well, sir, you should have seen that crowd go 
for jackknives. “Get a flash light and flash it 
around,” says Catty to me, so I did. He took 
in dollars for knives while I lighted up the place 
with a flash light in each hand. In five minutes 
the whole bottom of the wagon was covered 
with dollar bills and our fifty-eight jackknives 
were gone. 

“Sing a song, Mose,” says Catty, and Mose 
bellowed out another one of those funny songs 
he knows. When he was done Catty took a 
flash light and held it up. “Nickel plated,” he 
says. “Brand new. Say, Jim Street, how much 
did you pay for that flash light you bought the 
other day?” 

“Three-fifty,” says Jim. 

“Look at this one,” says Catty, “and see if it 
isn’t exactly the same as yours.” 

Jim looked and everybody waited to see 
what he would say. He turned it over and 
squinted at the trade mark and flashed it off 
and on. 

“The identical same thing,” says he. 

“Then this light’s worth three-fifty?” says 
Catty. 

“Yes.” 

“If I was to offer you this one for a dollar 
and a half, what would you say?” 

105 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“I’d say you was foolish/’ says Jim. 

“Well,” says Catty, “this is my foolish night. 
Who wants that flashlight for a dollar and a 
half?” 

“I do,” yelled Tom Jennifer, and he almost 
grabbed it out of Jim’s hand. 

“Pass up the money,” says Catty. “I’ve got 
five more at the same price. Same light ex¬ 
actly. Don’t crowd. Just five.” 

Those five lights went so quick it was hard 
to see who took them. 

“Any hunters here?” says Catty. “Sure 
there are. I see Jake Barnes. Know a fine 
hunting knife when you see it, don’t you, Jake? 
Well, take a squint at this one.” He passed 
down a knife to Jake, who examined it like it 
was a diamond he was going to buy for his best 
girl. 

“Good knife,” says he. 

“What’s it worth?” says Catty. 

“Two-three dollars,” says Jake. 

“Now,” says Catty, “as an expert—a 
hunter and a man who knows all about such 
things—what price would you think would be 
a big bargain for that knife? These folks all 
depend on your opinion, Jake, because they 
understand that you know.” 

“Wa-al,” says Jake, “I ’d be mighty tickled 

106 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

to git me a knife like this for a dollar and a 
half." 

“Honest?” 

“Sure.” 

“Will you give me a dollar and a half for this 
one ?” 

“Bet your life.” 

That was a deal, and Catty had got folks to 
feeling that Jake was such an expert and knew 
so well about things, that they took his word 
for it, and our six knives went in a couple of 
minutes. 

“Now,” says Catty, “while Mose gives us an¬ 
other song, Fd like to have you look at some¬ 
thing extra special in the way of jackknives. 
I’m going to pass ’em out for you to look at, 
and then, because I know the kind of folks you 
are, and that you’ll be fair about it, I’m going 
to let you appoint three men to set a price on 
them. How’s that?” 

Everybody laughed, but they sort of entered 
into the spirit of the thing, and when Mose was 
done Catty stood up and says, “Who’s the 
committee?” 

“I nominate Pete Williams,” says somebody. 

“And Rudy Brown.” 

“And Art Simmons.” 

“Will the committee meet here by the 

107 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

wagon, and set a fair price on these extra fine 
knives in cases?” says Catty. “Don’t make the 
price too high,” he says, and everybody 
laughed at that. 

The committee met as solemn as if they were 
directors of a bank and examined all of the 
eighteen knives. Then they argued, and finally 
Pete Williams says, 'Ladies and gentlemen, this 
committee has looked over the knives, and we 
feel that everybody will be getting a lot more 
than his money’s worth if he gets one for a 
dollar and a quarter.” 

“There you are,” says Catty. “Hear what 
your committee says. One dollar and twenty- 
five cents for the finest jackknife that ever 
came to town. Who wants the first one?” 

About ten folks wanted the first one, and 
there were six that wanted the last one, too, so 
five of them got disappointed. 

“Now, fishermen,” says Catty, “I’ve got 
three fishknives and nine first-class, quadruple 
multiplying casting reels, and three jointed 
steel rods, with lines and sinkers and artificial 
baits. What I’m going to do is take a rod and 
a reel and a line—a first-class, braided casting 
line—and a casting bait. Then I’m going to 
auction the lot. About twenty dollars’ worth of 
stuff, if I know anything about it. The reel 

108 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


alone is worth five or six dollars. Here you 
are. How much for a complete fishing outfit? 
What’s that? Two dollars? No, Jake, I’m not 
Santa Claus. . . . Three dollars—that’s bet¬ 
ter. Three-fifty. Four. . . . Four-fifty. . . . 
Five. . . Five dollars bid. Five dollars. 
Who’ll say six? Six. Nobody want this fish¬ 
ing outfit for six dollars ? What’s that ? Five- 
fifty. . . . Five-fifty, once. Five-fifty, twice. 
. . . Going, going, gone to Bill Toomey at five- 
fifty. Step up and get the biggest bargain you 
ever got, Bill.” 

Bill took his stuff and everybody wanted to 
see it, and he showed it as proud as if he’d made 
it himself, instead of buying it at auction. 

“Now,” says Catty, “I’ve got two more out¬ 
fits just like Bill’s. Anybody want them at the 
same price?” 

Two folks did, and that finished the rods and 
knives. But there were reels and hooks and 
sinkers left, and lines. 

“Fve got six more reels, just as good as those, 
and, just to get rid of them, I’m going to offer 
them for a dollar apiece. Just six. Step up, 
quick. Five-dollar reels for a dollar. You saw 
Bill’s reel, didn’t you? Well, here they are.” 

So six more dollar bills went on to the bottom 
of our wagon. 


109 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Ever get lost in the woods?” says Catty. 
“It’s a mean feeling. There’s just one way to 
keep straight, and that’s with a compass. 
We’ve got two very fine brass compasses. Fifty 
cents apiece. Only half a dollar. . . . You and 
you, eh? And who wants a pedometer? Wear 
it in your pants pocket and see how far you 
walk. Seventy-five cents. That’s the boy. 
And now three collapsible drinking cups. Han¬ 
diest thing in the world. Quarter apiece. Only 
a quarter. Nothing but bargains to-night. 
. . . And now here’s a job lot. Everybody 
likes job lots. There are eight assorted casting 
baits worth a dollar apiece and a box of fine 
lines and a tray of hooks and another of sink¬ 
ers. What am I offered for the lot? Easily 
twenty dollars’ worth. For a quick sale I’ll take 
five for the whole gaboodle. You again, Bill. 
Bill sure has a nose for a bargain. . . . And 
now, ladies and gentlemen, Mose will play and 
sing for you as long as you like. The sale is 
over. Whoop her up, Mose.” 

While Mose sang Catty and I counted up. 
We had what looked like a bushel of dollar 
bills, and when we came to get them all to¬ 
gether and counted we found what the sale had 
brought us in. It came out to an even one hun¬ 
dred and thirty dollars. 

110 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Finance,” says Catty. “Got our fifty dol¬ 
lars back and eighty more to keep it company.” 

“Yes,” says I, “and the showcase. We’ve 
still got that.” 

“Not bad,” says Catty, “for one deal. A 
couple more like this and we’ll be able to go in 
for something big.” 

“The bigger we go in,” says I, “the more we 
lose.” 

“If we gain,” says Catty, “it’s because we 
used our heads and deserved it. If we lose, 
it’s for the same reason.” 

“That,” says I, “sounds logical.” 


Ill 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


C ATTY was pretty well satisfied with him¬ 
self after the hardware proposition was 
over with. He said it was about as good a 
piece of financing as Mr. Rockefeller could do 
—to double his money and sixty per cent be¬ 
side in just one deal. We were getting pretty 
rich by this time. There was what we had 
made on the rowboat, and what we made with 
our grocery route, and what we made with our 
pop-corn stand. It was getting past a hundred 
dollars, with a lot of fun thrown in. Then 
Catty got his lawn-mowing idea. 

“We’ll canvass the town,” says he “and get 
the job of keeping all the lawns cut—all we can 
get. For so much a week.” 

“Don’t see any finance in that,” says I. 
“Looks like straight hard work.” 

“You don’t get the idea,” says he. 

“I don’t,” says I, “but I’ll get the backache.” 
“You’ll never get headache,” he says right 
back at me, and then he explained. “We’ll get 
all the lawns we can, and see what it figures up 
to, and then we’ll hire somebody else to do the 

112 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

work. We’ll pay ’em less than we get—and the 
profit will be ours.” 

‘That sounds good,” says I, “but who’s going 
to do it ? If a man can get a dollar for mowing 
a lawn for Mr. Jones, he isn’t going to mow the 
same lawn for us for seventy-five cents.” 

“There’s a difference,” says Catty, “between 
doing work by the job and by the day. We take 
work by the job, and hire somebody to do it by 
the day. See?” 

“No,” says I, prompt and emphatic. 

“How many lawns can a good man—say 
Mose White—mow in a day?” 

“Depends on the lawns,” says I. 

That kind of had him for a minute, and I guess 
he didn’t see any way out of it. But he wrig¬ 
gled out. You could see he was talking all 
around the bush while he thought about it, and 
figured out an argument. At last his face got 
kind of satisfied, and he says, “Oh, fiddle, Wee- 
wee. Come on. Let’s see how many lawns we 
can get.” 

“All right,” says I, just as if he’d won the 
argument, and off we went. We took our bikes 
and divided the town into sections. I took a 
street and he took a street, and we stopped at 
every house. I was surprised to find how many 
folks would like to have their lawns mowed 

113 



: ^CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

regularly every week. Catty told me how much 
to charge, and the way we got at it was to mow 
our lawn and see how long it took. Our lot is 
fifty by a hundred and twenty-five. It took the 
pair of us just half an hour to mow it and clip 
it and do a first-class job. 

“Men,” says he, “could do it quicker. But 
say half an hour. In this town we can hire 
Mose White and his brother-in-law for three 
dollars a day. That’s eight hours. Counting 
going from one place to another, they won’t 
mow more than a lawn an hour. Even small 
ones. We’ll charge a dollar a lawn for small 
lawns, and more according for big ones. The 
labor ’ll cost six dollars. We’ll take in eight. 
That makes two dollars a day profit.” 

So that’s how we went at it. We worked it 
systematic, and before the end of the week we 
had taken the contract to mow more than 
twenty lawns. Then, when other folks saw 
how well it worked out they came in, too, and 
before the summer was over we were taking 
care of just forty-two lawns, and some of them 
were big ones, like Mr. Bailey’s, that took two 
men a whole day to mow and clip. Mose and 
his brother worked all day long, six days a week 
for us, and they worked, too, for Catty had a 
way of turning up to watch them when they 

114 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

didn’t expect it, and after he’d sailed into them 
a couple of times for loafing, they didn’t try it 
any more. Besides that he went to Mandy, 
Mose’s wife, and told her she had to help keep 
Mose at work, and she said it would be the first 
time in his life he ever worked steady, but if 
we’d provide him steady work, she’d see to it 
he was on hand every day, or else he wouldn’t 
sleep in her house. So Mose worked. It turned 
out pretty well, and lasted until October. 

After getting the contracts in the first place, 
we hardly had to turn our hands over, and 
when we came to figure the profit on the lawn 
deal, it came to about twelve dollars a week for 
something like fourteen weeks. Not bad, just 
to pick up and put in your pocket. But that’s 
finance. 

We kind of developed our office about this 
time. We had pop corn and candy and soft 
drinks for sale all the time, and on ball game 
days we moved out to the ball park. Then we 
put in a couple of tables and some chairs, and 
served ice cream. Of course, with all our dif¬ 
ferent interests, we didn’t have much time to 
spend in the office, so Catty suggested we hire 
Benny Briggs, who was a lame kid and couldn’t 
get around much to work, and needed the 
money. He was our clerk, and took messages 

115 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

and orders and things that came in for our 
other businesses. We paid him five dollars a 
week, and he earned it. You bet he did. 

It was pretty slick to have a regular office 
like a grown-up financier, and a clerk in it. I 
felt pretty chesty, and Catty got about twice as 
big around the wishbone. 

All this time Catty was looking for the Big 
Idea—the one that was really going to make us 
rich, but he hadn’t got it yet. I began to think 
he never would, but I was satisfied as things 
were. He wasn’t. He never was satisfied. If 
we made two dollars, he thought it should have 
been four. If we made eighty dollars, he said 
that just went to prove we could make eight 
hundred if we went at it. 

“Yes,” says I, “and if we make eight hundred 
that proves we can make eight thousand, and 
if we can make eight thousand, that proves we 
can make eighty thousand. Why, doggone it, 
at that rate we can sit here and prove we can 
make eighty billions, and nobody ever did that 
yet.” 

“There’s always got to be a first time,” says 
Catty as sober as a judge. Yes, sir, that’s what 
he said, and he meant it. I’ll bet he made up his 
mind right there to be the first man in the world 
who ever made eighty billion dollars. And 

116 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

whatever he’d do with all of it I couldn’t see. 
But I was his partner, and so forty billion 
would be mine. I didn’t want forty billion and 
I told him so. “Forty million’s plenty ” says I, 
“any more would be a nuisance. You couldn’t 
spend it. You’d have to hire folks to spend it 
for you, and that’s silly. Any man that has to 
hire folks just to spend money is wasteful,” 
says I. “That’s what he is.” 

“Why,” says Catty, “with eighty billion dol¬ 
lars we could go and buy a country. Not a big 
one, maybe, but a little one like Portugal. And 
when we bought it, every stick and stone of it, 
we could do as we wanted to. We could make 
ourselves kings of it.” 

“Kings!” says I. “Both of us. Uh-uh. Not 
two kings in one country. That always raises 
a rumpus. We’d be sicking our knights on one 
another, and throwing one another into dun¬ 
geons. Nope. Just one king. We can draw 
cuts for it.” By this time both of us had got 
so far we were about ready to pick out the 
country we were going to buy. 

“No,” says Catty, “you can be king.” 

“Eh?” says I. “What’s the idea? What’ud 
you be? I never saw you taking a back seat 
before.” 

“You go ahead,” says he, “and be king. 

117 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


You’d like it, and I don’t think I would. Robes 
and a crown would be kind of hot in the sum¬ 
mer. Nope, you be king, Wee-wee.” 

“All right,” says I, “but what are you going 
to do? Be a crown prince?” 

“Not by a jugful,” says he. “I’m going to 
be prime minister—like Richelieu was. The 
prime minister just has a job, and the king gives 
him the job. But this Richelieu was such a 
brainy prime minister he got so he was boss of 
the king. He was the brains of the whole king¬ 
dom. That’s what he was. He let the king 
keep on kinging and wearing the crown and 
doing the fancy things, but Richelieu, he kept 
sawing wood, and did the real work.” 

“Um. . . .” says I. 

“Sure. If you wanted a favor of the king, 
did you go to the king for it? You did not. 
You went to Richelieu, and he told you whether 
the king would let you have it.” 

“What was the king doing all this time?” 
says I. 

“He was satisfied,” says Catty. “He didn’t 
have to do anything but order in his court 
jester, and eat all he wanted, and wear robes 
and ride around for the populace to cheer. He 
had a slick job.” 

“Maybe so,” says I, “but I guess we’d better 

118 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

take turn about. I be king a week and you be 
prime minister. Then you be king and I be 
prime minister/' 

“Wouldn’t work,” says he. “There’d be dif¬ 
ferent policies, and you’ve got to have the same 
policy all the time, or the kingdom goes to 
smash.” 

“Didn’t know you insured kingdoms,” says I. 

“Insured kingdoms!” says he. “What you 
talking about ?” 

“Why, what you were,” says I. “Policies. 
You said they had to have the same insurance 
policies all the while.” 

“Policies!” says he. “Not insurance policies. 
A policy means you set out with the idea of 
making war on somebody, and you stick to it 
until you’re ready and know you can lick the 
other country, and then you lick it. That’s 
policies. It was Richelieu’s strong holt.” 

I kind of thought it over, but I didn’t like it 
from any angle. “I’ll tell you,” says I, “when 
the time comes, we’ll buy two little countries, 
and both of us ’ll be prime ministers. Then 
there won’t be any disagreement.” And that’s 
how we left it. 

But all this hasn’t anything to do with the 
Big Idea, for Catty got one, just like he always 
seems to get him an idea when he needs one, 

119 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


and the Big Idea is more or less why this story 
came to be. That and Harbottle Pawky, and 
somehow the two of them seemed to be all 
mixed up. Not in the Idea exactly, but tied 
together. Because Mr. Toop was what Pawky 
had to contend with in his business, and Mr. 
Toop’s son was what Catty and I ran up against 
when we came to working the Big Idea. 

It seems as if there always had to be some¬ 
thing. The Big Idea would have been fine and 
it would have run along as smooth as slippery 
ellum if it hadn’t been for young Toop, but 
there he was as big as life and twice as natural. 
And when he got to work it ran as smooth as 
sandpaper with wrinkles in it. Even now that 
it is all over, I can’t think of that Toop kid 
without getting into a cold sweat. 

We were financiers, but we weren’t so very 
financial. Not to speak of. Less than two hun¬ 
dred dollars was about how heavy we were with 
the finance; but young Toop! Ouch! All he 
had to do was run to his pa, who jingled with 
dollars, and ask for what he wanted. He had 
dollars where we had cents. But there was one 
thing he couldn’t borrow from his dad, and 
that was what Catty had inside his head. 
Money is a bully thing, and it can kick up an 
awful row when you set it to work. But you 

120 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


have to mix it with brains to get the best re¬ 
sults. Now as for me, I’d rather mix a little 
money with lots of brains, and lots of money 
with little brains. The prescription turns out 
better. 

The Toop kid was pretty smart, at that, but 
he was all complicated by a disposition, and he 
was spoiled, and thought he was a Northern spy, 
while the rest of us were nothing but crab 
apples. That was a bad notion. It’s all right 
to think you are a pippin, but give the other 
fellow credit for being a russet anyhow. Don’t 
underestimate him too much. No, sir. You 
always want to figure the other fellow runs 
about four to the hill, anyhow. Then if he only 
runs two to the hill you’re that much better off. 
But if you start off by thinking he only runs 
two to the hill and he turns out to run six, why, 
you’ve got yourself in a dickens of a mess and 
maybe you’ve sprained your nose. I thought 
this out myself. It isn’t Catty’s smartness. 
Sometimes, when I’m all alone, and get to 
thinking about it, I get the idea that maybe I’m 
not so dumb after all. But, on the other hand, 
maybe I am. 

Well, what with our various enterprises, and 
looking for the Big Idea, and worrying about 
Pawky, we were a pretty busy pair, especially 

121 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


after those men of Toop’s took to tagging us 
around in the hope we’d lead them to that static 
invention Mr. Toop was so anxious to get. 

You’d better believe they followed us. Every 
time we lifted our eyes off of our feet, there 
was one of them. As soon as one of us left 
home, there was a man, and, I’ll bet a cent, 
they peeked through a knot hole and watched 
us get into bed. Now, if you think it was easy 
to dodge and get food out to Pawky in such cir¬ 
cumstances, why, you’ve got another guess. 
And we had to get him something to eat. If 
we didn’t, he’d starve, and then somebody 
would find out about it, and maybe we’d have 
to go to jail. You never can tell. Law’s a 
funny thing. 

It was Wednesday, and we just naturally had 
to get to see Pawky that day. We had to dodge 
Mr. Toop’s spies. We did it, but it almost 
turned our hair pink. Yes, sir, that was about 
the dodgingest day we ever had, and I’ll bet 
that spying fellow will remember it to his dying 
day. I have to laugh yet when I think about 
it, and yet I didn’t laugh so awful much at the 
time. You can always laugh better after than 
during. Things are a lot funnier when their 
stinger has been pulled. 


122 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


W E had one advantage over Toop’s men, 
and that was that we knew they were 
watching us, and they didn’t know we knew it. 
So we could plan, and that’s what we sat down 
to do. 

“No use talking,” says Catty, “we’ve got to 
get out to see Pawky to-day.” 

“Sure,” says I. “You hold the two men and 
tie ’em to a tree while I go.” 

“Um. . . .” says Catty. 

“There’s the big one now,” says I, pointing 
across the street where the man was sort of 
lounging and keeping us under his eye. 

“Wonder where the other one is,” says Catty. 
“Maybe he isn’t on the job to-day.” 

“We’ll find out,” says he. “You go off up 
the street to the old ice house. I’ll go the other 
way. Then we’ll both circle and meet down by 
the waterworks. That way we can tell. The 
big one can’t follow both of us.” 

“On your way,” says I, and off we went. 
The big one followed Catty, but before I had 
got to the corner there was the other one kind 

123 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


of slinking along behind me. Well, I gave him 
a fine chase and got his feet wet for him. I 
ducked down by the bayou and right across the 
swamp. I got in water to my knees, but I didn’t 
care about that. I guess he thought I was get¬ 
ting into a pretty likely place to hide somebody, 
so he stuck to me, and when he came out at the 
other side he was black muck almost to his 
waist. That was some satisfaction. 

Then I circled around and met Catty at the 
waterworks. This was early in the morning. 
When I came up with him Catty had that kind 
of satisfied expression on his face that he wears 
when he thinks he’s thought of something 
smart, so I says, “Well, cough it up. What’s it 
going to be ?” 

“I think,” says he, “Eve found a way to get 
to see Pawky.” 

“And take the horse and wagon?” 

“Yes.” 

“Fine,” says I. “How?” 

“You just come along with me,” says he, 
“and watch.” 

“We got to load our groceries and meat and 
other stuff for this trip,” says I. 

“Of course,” says he. 

So off we went and got our load on, and then 
we started out of the village toward the lake. 

124 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Behind us came the big one and the other one 
in a buggy, keeping just far enough behind so 
they thought we wouldn’t suspect we were being 
followed. Well, we poked along until we got 
abreast of Sile Wiggins’s early corn field, which 
was between the road and Sile’s strawberry 
patch. Sile judged it was safer to have his 
strawberries back from the road. Not but what 
he watched them pretty careful wherever he 
was, and we fellows had found out it was a 
good place to let alone. Here Catty stopped, 
and the buggy behind us stopped, too. 

“Here’s where we start the toboggan,” says 
Catty, and out he got. 

“You’re not going to monkey with Sile, are 
you?” 

“Well,” says Catty, “kind of.” And he 
climbed the fence and dropped into the corn. 
I wasn’t fond of picking rock salt out of where 
I sit down, but I went, too. We crawled in a 
ways, and then scroutched down between the 
rows and waited. The big one and the other 
one followed us right in. They came cautious 
and subtile as Indians. Catty and I kept going 
when we were sure they were after us, and 
headed for the strawberry patch. 

“Now,” says Catty, “you skin over toward 
Sile’s house. I hear him chopping stove wood. 

125 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

You call out to him that somebody’s in his 
strawberries. See?” 

I saw, but I didn’t understand what I saw 
worth a cent. Orders was orders, though, so 
off I went. Sure enough, Sile was working 
alongside his woodshed, and I stepped out and 
says, “Sile, somebody’s in your strawberry 
bed.” 

Well, sir, he dropped his ax and busted into 
the kitchen door, and out he came with a shot¬ 
gun, and the way he streaked it through the 
corn to the strawberries was a caution. Just as 
Catty planned it, I guess, he came right in be¬ 
hind the big one and the other one, and the first 
thing I heard was Sile letting out a yell. 

“Hands up, ye sneakin’ thieves,” says he. 
“Stick your hands right up as high as ye kin 
lift ’em, ’fore I fill ye fuller of holes than a 
sieve.” 

He had his gun aimed right at the men, and 
the men stopped and looked mighty unhappy. 

“Say!” says the big one. 

“Shet your mouth and put up your hands,” 
says Sile. 

“Put down that gun,” says the big one. 
“What’s the matter with you ?” 

“You be, you lurkin’, strawberry-stealin’ 
wampus,” says Sile. “And I ketched you right 

126 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

in the act. Don’t ye give me no back talk 
nuther. Jail’s where ye’ll go for this, or I’m a 
tomcat. Had enough of this thievin’ and 
stealin’, and I aim to make an example out of 
you. Bad enough when its boys, but when 
growed men set to it, then it’s time something 
was done.” 

“We didn’t come to steal your strawberries,” 
says the big one. 

“Sure you didn’t,” says Sile, sarcastic-like. 
“You jest come in here to take a nap. If ye 
wa’n’t after berries, what was you doin’ in 
here?” 

Well, that was a question they couldn’t very 
well answer, because they couldn’t go and tell 
how they were following Catty and me. If 
they did, Sile would want to know why they 
were following us—and there you were. 

Sile got more and more sarcastic, and mad¬ 
der and madder. “No,” says he, “I s’pose you 
wouldn’t eat a strawberry if it was shoved in 
your mouth. Not you. Uh-uh. What you 
come for was nice, purple violets for a button¬ 
hole bokay. Or mebby you come to dig worms 
for bait. I’ll bait ye. . . . Now shet up your 
traps and march.” 

“You look here,” says the big one, “you’ll get 
into trouble pointing a gun at folks like that.” 

127 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Mebby. Law’s perty severe on farmers that 
pertect their crops from thieves, hain’t it? I 
calc’late ye’ll collect heavy damages off’n me. 
. . . Wa-al, I’ll give you cause and aggerva- 
tion. You march.” 

They marched, grumbling and threatening, 
but Sile never paid a bit of attention. He just 
mogged on behind, and every time one of them 
turned, he wiggled his gun, and that was 
enough. He marched them out of the cornfield 
and into the farmyard and right up to the corn- 
crib. The door was open. 

“Git in,” says he, “that’s your roost for a 
spell.” 

“In there?” says the big one. 

“Right in there,” says Sile, polite as could be. 
“Hope ye’ll be comfortable. Jest make your¬ 
selves to home.” 

“What’s the idea?” 

“The idea is that I’m busy this mornin’,” says 
Sile, “and I hain’t no time to go traipsin’ in to 
the jail with ye. But I’ll have time later in the 
day. In with ye.” 

They roared and kicked as loud as they 
dared, but in they got, and Sile slammed shut 
the door and clicked the padlock. That dis¬ 
posed of the spies for a while. Catty kind of 
chuckled and I felt middling happy myself. 

128 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Now,” he whispered, “we can call on 
Pawky.’’ 

We went back cautious to our rig and off we 
went down the road. First off we did our er¬ 
rands and delivered our goods to customers. 
Then we worked back pretty careful, because 
there was a chance somebody else might be 
watching for us, or just hunting around in the 
woods for Pawky. But we didn’t see a soul. 
Not until we turned up an old tote road and 
into a thicket where we hitched Maude S. It 
was then we saw the Toop kid. 

He was mosying along in the woods with 
a twenty-two rifle—after squirrels, I guess, 
but he was in an unlucky place to be squirrel 
hunting that morning. Unlucky for us, any¬ 
how, if he saw us, which was exactly what 
he did. 

“Huh,” says he, “what you prowling around 
here for. Say. Want to scare all the game in 
the woods?” 

“You won’t find any game around here,” says 
I, “but there’s squirrels on the hardwood ridge 
back yonder.” 

“Oh, there are, are they?” says he, kind of 
snappy. “I guess I don’t need you to tell me 
where to hunt.” 

“You need a lot of folks to tell you a lot of 

129 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

things/' says I, “and one of ’em is going to be 
told you by me, and that is that if you go get¬ 
ting fresh with me, you’ll go home wearing 
your nose on the back of your neck.” 

“Two to one,” says he. 

“No,” says I, “one to one.” 

“I wouldn’t muss up my hands with you,” 
says he. “I think too much of myself.” 

“I ain’t so particular,” says I, “I don’t care 
who I lick. I can wash my hands afterwards.” 

“Got a rope?” says Catty in a whisper. 

“Got a strong cord,” says I, “about ten feet 
of it.” 

“Good,” says he. Then he turned to Toop. 
“We’re squatters,” says he, “and we’ve squatted 
on this part of the woods. We’ve staked out a 
claim, and we don’t want anybody monkeying 
around on it. So git.” 

“I won’t,” says Toop. “I got as much right 
here as you have.” 

“We can’t monkey with him,” says Catty 
soft-like. 

“No,” says I, and I began edging toward 
Toop. Catty started coming in from the other 
side. And then I had a thought. 

“Come here,” says I to Catty, and when he 
came I asked him what he intended to do with 
Toop. 


130 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Tie him to a tree while we tend to business,” 
says he. 

“Be fun,” says I, “but bad politics.” 

“Why?” says he. 

“He’d tell his dad, and his dad would get the 
idea right off that we are too much interested 
in this part of the woods. No good letting on 
we’re too anxious.” 

“Wee-wee,” says Catty, “you’ve got it right. 
I was so anxious to hand something to Toop, 
that I lost sight of the main business.” 

“Well,” says I, “what then?” 

“Give him the slip,” says Catty. He turned 
to Toop. “Maybe we can’t chase you out of 
these woods,” he says, “and maybe we can. But 
we haven’t time to-day. But remember, you’ve 
got something coming to you.” 

“I’ll be waiting for it,” says Toop. 

Catty turned off without another word and 
walked in the opposite direction to what we 
wanted to go and I followed. We walked fast, 
and when we got to a gully we laid low for ten 
minutes and then circled. We cut away back 
in the woods and then headed for the lake. 
When we got near the lighthouse we hid for ten 
minutes, but there was no sign of Toop, so we 
slid along and went out to where Pawky was. 
He wasn’t in sight, so we went inside and 

131 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


climbed. There he was, sitting on the floor 
with some dinguses in his ears, looking as 
happy as a cat that’s caught a mouse. 

“What you doing?” says I. 

“Listening to some excellent music,” says he. 

“Git out,” says I. 

Well, he passed over the thingumbobs and I 
listened, and sure enough, there was a concert 
going on. “Not as clear,” says he, “as if I had 
my device attached, but pretty good.” 

“Hungry?” says Catty. 

“Now that I’m reminded of it,” says he, “I 
am.” 

“Then I’ll get your dinner,” Catty says, and 
he went at it. We ate with Pawky and told him 
all that had happened, which made him pretty 
nervous. 

“Something,” says he, “must be done.” 

“What?” says Catty. 

“I’m sure,” says Mr. Pawky, “I don’t know.” 

“You’re a great help,” Catty says. 

“I’ve other things to think of. I’m working 
out a new idea.” 

“You’d better rescue your old one,” Catty 
says, “because if you don’t—Toop ’ll get it 
away from you.” 

“No doubt you’re right,” says he, “but some¬ 
how I seem to see no means of doing it.” 

132 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Catty hunched his shoulders. “I guess it’s 
up to you and me/’ he says, and he said it like 
he was kind of tickled with the idea. “We’ll 
have to find out what to do, and then do it. 
You just lay low, and leave it to us.” 

“We need something to do to keep us busy,” 
says I, kind of sarcastic. 

Catty was looking out of the window toward 
the shore. 

“I guess we’ve got it,” says he. “We didn’t 
lose that Toop kid as much as we thought we 
did. There he is.” 

I looked and, sure enough, there he was. He 
stood a few minutes looking at the lighthouse, 
and then he waved his hand in a mean kind of 
a way, as much as to say, “Well, I’ve got you 
now,” and then he turned and went away. 

“Now what?” says I. 

“Pawky,” says Catty, “has got to move, and 
he’s got to move quick.” 


4 


133 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


> Catty says, if you’ve got to do a thing, 



\ the way to do it is to do it, and the sooner 
the suddener. It was clear that young Toop 
had seen enough to make him mighty sus¬ 
picious. He would tell where he had seen us, 
and in no time at all somebody would be snoop¬ 
ing around to find Pawky. We just naturally 
had to get him out of there and put him some 
place where he wouldn’t be noticed. But, on 
the other hand, there wasn’t any place I could 
think of that was as good as this old lighthouse. 

“Let’s kind of fortify this,” says I, “and 
stand ’em off.” 

“Fine chance,” says Catty. “Besides, we’ve 
got our business to ’tend to, and we can’t stick 
around here to be a garrison. We’re busy 
men.” 

“Yes,” says I, “there’s quite a ways to go yet 
before we land that million.” 

“Wait,” says he, “till I get my idea worked 
out right, and you’ll see how the money comes 
rolling in.” 

“Nobody’s going to bother us for an hour or 


134 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

so, anyhow,” I says. “They’ll be getting each 
other out of jail.” 

“And that’s our chance,” says Catty. “We’ve 
got Pawky’s invention and papers safe—any¬ 
how, I think so. But if they get hold of him it 
will spill the whole keg of nails. We’ve got to 
plant him some place where he’ll be easy for us 
to get at, but impossible for them to find.” 

“Wish we could keep him in our office,” says I. 

Catty stepped off and looked at me. “Was 
that an idea,” says he, “or did you just say it 
to have something to say?” 

“Why?” says I. 

“Because,” says he, “if you thought it up, 
it’s better than I’ve been giving you credit for; 
and if you just said it, why, then, you do a lot 
better not to think at all, but just to talk.” 

“What d’ye mean ?” says I. 

“I mean,” he says, “that I believe we can hide 
Pawky right in our store and he’ll be safer 
there than any place else in the county. Right 
under their noses, and where we can take care 
of him all the time. We could put him behind 
the partition, and never let him come out. He 
wouldn’t either. Just give him a piece of 
wire to monkey with, and he’d stay in there 
and invent if the place was burning over his 
head.” 


135 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“But,” says I, “how would we get him 
there?” 

“Wagon,” says he. 

“But we’re watched.” 

“Never less than we are right now. I’ll bet 
Toop has run off home to tell his dad. The 
other men are busy. We can sneak Pawky 
through the woods and make him lie down 
in the wagon and cover him over. Then 
we can drive into town as bold as brass 
and back up to our back door and rush him 
right in.” 

“It’s risky,” says I. 

“If Columbus hadn’t risked something 
he never would have discovered America,” 
says he. 

“But what’ll Pawky say?” 

“He won’t have anything so say. He’ll have 
to do as he’s told.” 

Well, that was that. Catty sent me across 
to scout around in the woods to make sure Toop 
was gone. It didn’t take me long, for I walked 
down along the edge of the lake and saw him 
rowing away in his boat. When I came back 
Catty had Pawky ready for the trip, wires and 
boxes and everything. We scooted him through 
the woods and piled him in the wagon on some 
straw and covered him with a canvas. I don’t 

136 


WHEN I CAME BACK CATTY HAD PAWKY READY FOR THE TRIP, WIRES AND BOXES AND 

EVERYTHING 










CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


believe he had much idea what was happening 
to him, but he didn’t kick about it a bit. Guess 
his mind was on something else. It gave me a 
kind of a funny feeling to be riding along that 
way with a man hidden in the wagon, and Catty 
nudged me and says, 

“Don’t look so doggone guilty/’ 

“Can’t help it,” says I. 

“You’ve got to help it,” says he. “We’ll 
be meeting folks right along, and if they 
see you looking the way you do, they’ll 
call the sheriff on general principles. You 
look,” says he, “like a man that had stolen 
a horse and was trying to carry it home in his 
pocket.” 

Well, we got into town all right and drove 
up Main Street. We passed Mr. Toop him¬ 
self coming out of the justice’s office, and 
both of his men were with him, so I guess he 
got them out of their scrape all right. Catty 
grinned. 

“Wouldn’t they jump out of their skins if 
they knew ?” he says. “Gee, I’d like to stop and 
talk to them.” 

“Not for me,” says I, “I want to be some- 
wheres else quick. Say, if this is the way a 
criminal feels, I’m going to stay honest all my 
life.” 


137 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Toop and his big man were looking at us, and 
Catty grinned. “Hey,” he called out, “how’d 
you like strawberries?” 

Mr. Toop kind of laughed, but the big man 
scowled and said something disagreeable. 

“Let this,” says Catty, sober-like, “teach you 
not to monkey with the buzz saw.” 

“What d’ye mean ?” says the man. 

“Nothin’ much,” says Catty, kind of 
provoking. 

“Hey you, hold up. I want to talk to you, 
kid.” 

“Takes two to make a confab,” says Catty. 
“I don’t want to talk to you—to-day. Maybe 
I will sometime, and when I do, I’ll drop you a 
postal.” 

I was almost busting, and if he hadn’t driven 
on right then I’d have blown up with a bang, 
but he did drive on. We got to our store and 
Catty turned in and backed right up to the back 
door. 

“Cast your eye around and see if it’s safe,” 
says he. 

We both took a good look, and nobody was in 
sight, so we sneaked Pawky out of the wagon 
and ran him into our back room. 

“I wish,” says Catty to him, “that you had 
long green whiskers or something for a dis- 

138 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


guise. I wonder if we couldn’t get him some. 
Then we wouldn’t need to hide him.” 

“I will not,” says Mr. Pawky as dignified as 
could be, “I will not wear false whiskers.” 

“Young man,” says Catty, “if it’s necessary 
and I tell you to, you’ll wear a necklace of lemon 
wafers. Now make yourself comfortable. 
We’ll fix you up as snug as a bug in a rug. But 
don’t stick your nose out of this room, and don’t 
talk. The idea,” he explained, “is that you’re 
hiding. The way to hide is to hide.” 

“Precisely,” says Mr. Pawky. “I shall con¬ 
vert this room into a laboratory. It will be very 
convenient.” 

“Convert in into a quiet laboratory,” says 
Catty. 

“How about that Big Idea?” says I. “It’s 
about time to shoot if we’re going to before 
school starts up.” 

“Um. . . . Come on and we’ll sit down and 
think it over.” 

So we went into the office and sat down and 
I thought and thought and kept on thinking, 
but all I seemed to manage to think about was 
what a good day it was to go swimming, and 
that probably the bass were biting, and that I 
wished I had a snare drum, and why our team 
didn’t win more games and such-like things. 

139 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

There wasn’t a cent in a single think. Catty 
kind of wiggled around and scratched his head 
and chewed his lip, and then he says, 

“To make money you’ve got to sell some¬ 
thing.” 

“Yes,” says I. 

“And to have something to sell, you’ve got to 
own something, or find something, or make 
something, or buy something.” 

“Sure,” says I. 

“And the more people there are who want 
what you’ve got, the surer you are of making 
money.” 

“Yes.” 

“And the less expensive it is to sell, the more 
folks will buy it.” 

“Unless,” says I, “it’s foolish and they can’t 
afford it.” 

“Um. . . . Now what is something that 
everybody here will want that nobody is giving 
them ?” 

“Money,” says I. 

He just grunted. “There must be some— 
some commodity—that this town is crying 
for.” 

“Commodity is about the best word you’ve 
got off to-day,” says I. “Yes, there must be 
one, but the real thing would be to find some- 

140 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

thing they had to have whether they wanted it 
or not—something necessary.” 

“Um. . . . Now you’re talking. What is 
necessary?” 

“Bread and water and salt and gasoline and 
coal and wood,” says I. 

“We’re getting warm,” he says. “Now if we 
could just hit on something that we can get and 
nobody else can, and that folks have got to 
have.” 

“That,” says I, “would be fine. But what 
might it be ?” 

“Hanged if I know. But there’s some¬ 
thing. . . . By cracky!” he said, all of a sud¬ 
den. “Firewood.” 

“Eh ?” 

“Look at the coal strike. Coal’s going to be 
hard to get, I’ll bet you. Folks aren’t thinking 
much about it yet, but they will be. And it will 
be expensive. And almost everybody here uses 
wood for the kitchen, and there are lots of stoves 
and fireplaces. I heard a couple of men talking 
the other day about how hard it was to get fire¬ 
wood, even with all the trees there are growing 
around here. Nobody will cut it. Nobody 
makes a business of it. Wee-wee, I believe 
we’ve hit it on the head.” 

“Where’d we get it ?” 

141 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Off where dad’s company is cutting logs. 
There’s lots of tops and slashings that would 
make fine firewood, but they just lie and go to 
waste. There’s thousands of cords of per¬ 
fectly good wood rotting in the woods all 
around. I’ll bet we could saw and cut a thou¬ 
sand cords off dad’s place without turning a 
hair.” 

“How would we get it ? Who’d cut it ?” 

“Hire men—and get a buzz saw—and 
wagons to deliver. Why, I’ll bet we could sell 
other towns, too. I’ll bet we could sell thou¬ 
sands of cords if we can manage to get it 
sawed.” 

“How’ll we find out?” 

“I’ll see dad. We’ll find out what we can get 
the wood for. Ought to get it for almost noth¬ 
ing, because it’s going to waste. Then there 
are slabs from the mill. We could buv them all 
up, and maybe dad would saw them on the 
slasher for us. The thing to do is to choke off 
every possible source of supply, so that nobody 
but us will have any wood to sell.” 

“Sounds big,” says I. “How much would we 
make?” 

“No limit,” says he, “especially if we ship to 
other towns. Do a wholesale business as well 
as a retail.” 


142 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Looks too hard for kids to handle,” says I. 

“Why?” says he. “We sell pop corn, don’t 
we? And ice cream? What’s the difference. 
We have to pop our corn and make our cream. 
If we can sell one thing we can sell another. 
I’m going to see dad right now.” 

“Where does the finance come in?” 

“Can’t swing it without capital, can we? 
Have to have money to buy the wood and to 
pay our men. . . . And the idea. The idea is 
the big thing in finance.” 

“Suppose,” says I, “we sold a thousand cords. 
How much would we make?” 

“A lot,” says he, “Ell bet we’d make more 
than a dollar a cord.” 

“Golly!” says I. 

“It won’t be easy. There’ll be lots of work 
and lots of figuring, and with all our other proj¬ 
ects going on we’ll be busier than a cat trying 
to get fly paper off its feet. Are you game ?” 

“Sure,” says I. “Hop to it. But don’t forget 
Pawky. We’re financiers, but we’re nurse¬ 
maids, too.” 

“Maybe we can use him somehow. Never 
can tell.” 

“Suppose we do tackle this,” says I, “how do 
we sell it?” 

“We get out and hustle.” 

143 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“And suppose there’s somebody else goes 
into it ?” 

“Competition? Well, we’ve got to expect 
that. But if we have to buck competition, the 
thing to do is to get started and get on the 
ground first. Always get the jump on the other 
fellow.” 

“Fine,” says I. “Let’s get at it. I’m all het 
up for that million, and this looks like a chance 
to get a fine piece of it.” 


144 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


M AYBE you remember Mr. Atkins and 
how he came to our town nothing but 
a tramp, with straggly whiskers, and his hair 
all over the lot and as shiftless as anybody could 
be. And maybe you remember how Catty de¬ 
cided his family shouldn’t be shiftless any more, 
and so made his father settle down and go 
to work, and then Mr. Atkins got so as to 
like it, and trimmed his beard and cut his 
hair, and after a while got into a regular busi¬ 
ness with a factory and lots of men working 
for him—making novelties out of wood. 
Well, whether you remember it or not, it 
was so. 

I tell you this because Catty and I went to 
see Mr. Atkins as soon as we got the Big Idea. 
He was in his office whittling. Generally he 
was whittling when he wasn’t fishing, but he 
was most valuable when he was fooling around 
with his knife, because it was then he got up the 
novelties for his company to manufacture. We 
went right into his office and he looked up and 
smiled and acted like he was glad to see us. I 

145 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


guess he was. He always was glad to see folks. 
Catty didn’t wait a second. 

“Dad,” he said, “you know that quarter sec¬ 
tion you’re logging on the edge of town.” 

“I’ve heard of it,” says Mr. Atkins. 

“Well, there are a lot of tops and slashings 
and such-like laying around, aren’t there?” 

“To be sure. To be sure.” 

“What d’you do with ’em?” 

“Heap ’em up and burn ’em,” says Mr. 
Atkins. 

“Um. . . . Nuisance to you, aren’t they?” 

“Consid’able.” 

“Well, say somebody was to come in with 
maybe eight or ten men and clean all that out 
of your way—save you the trouble, would it be 
worth anything to you ?” 

I kind of got bug-eyed at that. Here Catty 
was trying to get paid for taking wood he ex¬ 
pected to sell for a lot of money. That was 
more nerve than I ever expected to stand up 
and see. Catty told me afterwards that was 
real business. He said that was the first prin¬ 
ciple when you were trying to get rich—to make 
the other fellow think you are doing him a 
favor and make him pay for it, when really he 
was doing you a whopping favor himself. It 
sounded kind of complicated and ungrateful 

146 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


to me, but maybe business is different from 
real life. 

"Why/’ says Mr. Atkins, "I don’t know that 
it would be worth much to us.” 

"You wouldn’t pay the men’s wages that did 
it for you?” 

"Wa-al, I hardly think so. You see we 
mostly let those tops lay and it isn’t hardly 
worth the trouble of heaping them up to burn.” 

"But they’re dangerous,” says Catty. "Nine 
forest fires out of ten start in slashings.” 

"Mebby so. . . . Mebby so.” 

"It wouldn’t be worth anything to you if 
somebody dragged all that stuff away, eh ?” 

"Not to speak of. If anybody was dum fool 
enough to drag it off, he could have it and wel¬ 
come, but that’s about all I say.” 

"Um. Suppose Catty and I wanted to hire 
some men to haul that heavier stuff off, could 
we have it?” 

"Sure. Say, what’s the idea, anyhow ?” 

"Oh, we just thought maybe we could 
make a little money out of it. Firewood, you 
know.” 

"Firewood, eh? Calc’late that stuff would 
saw up into wood all right. Don’t seem to be 
much firewood hereabouts either. Nobody’ll 
take the trouble to saw and split. Rather let 

147 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


the wood rot than use it. Um. . . . Sure, you 
boys can have all you want.” 

“And if we wanted to move a buzz saw on to 
a corner of the place would it be in the way?” 

“Not if you put it where it was out of the 
way,” says Mr. Atkins. 

“And we can have all we want?” 

“You can have all there is—but I don’t guess 
you’ll want much. Sawing and splitting wood 
ain’t any fun.” 

Catty sort of grinned to himself. “You never 
can tell,” he says. 

We hustled out to talk some more, because 
when you’re going into a big thing you have to 
do a lot of talking and planning, and figuring. 
We went to the office and sat down and got 
paper and pencils, and there wasn’t ever a 
board of directors of a corporation that did any 
harder work than we did right there. No, sir, 
the way we laid into that job was a caution to 
cats. 

“Let’s see,” says I, “we get our wood for 
nothing. That’s that. How much ’ll it cost us 
to saw it up into stove lengths?” 

“I don’t know, but it hadn’t ought to cost 
much. We’ve got to find out how many cords 
a buzz saw can saw in a day, and what wages 
we’ll have to pay men to run it. We’ll have to 

148 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

hire more men to swamp out the big pieces and 
carry them to the saw, and we’ll have to hire 
horses and wagons and men to deliver it. I 
want to tell you, Wee-wee, this is a whopping 
big thing with a lot of ends to it that have to be 
looked after. Why, we’ll have to keep books 
and everything.” 

“You can do that,” says I, “without any con¬ 
test from us. Keep books! Whoo! And add 
up figures all the time. You go to it, Old 
Turnip, I don’t want any.” 

“Huh,” says he, “if we keep books I’ll have to 
do it, if it’s done right.” 

“Sure,” says I, “but how many men will we 
have to hire, and how much will we have to 
pay them, and how much can we sell our wood 
for, and how much wood can we sell ?” 

“That,” says he, “is a thing we’ve got to find 
out.” 

“And where,” says I, “will we get a buzz 
saw?” 

“We’ll have to look into that, too. Say, it 
seems to me it would be more economical to buy 
us a buzz saw than it would be to rent one. 
Anyhow, we can look into that.” 

“They have to have an engine, don’t they?” 

“Gas engine,” says Catty. “I’ve seen ’em 
running with little gas engines.” 

149 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Um. Ought not to cost much—if we can 
find one second hand. Say, s’pose we could sell 
our wood for maybe five dollars a cord, and it 
didn’t cost us more than a dollar a cord to 
manufacture and deliver it. And we sold a 
thousand cords. Whoop-ee! Four thousand 
dollars profit!” 

“Wee-wee,” says Catty, “four thousand dol¬ 
lars isn’t much money. It isn’t even a good 
start toward that million.” 

“How much capital have we got now, eh? 
We started with fifty dollars. How much have 
we made?” 

“Don’t know exactly. Of course, we’ve got 
some invested in stock and one thing and an¬ 
other, and just how much we have in the bank 
I don’t know. I left our bank book to be writ¬ 
ten up. But we want to find out so as to know 
just how much we can spend on the start.” 

“The way we been working, what with our 
route at the lake, and cutting grass, and pop 
corn and odd jobs on the side, and our hard¬ 
ware project, we ought to have a whopping 
lot.” 

“We’ve done pretty good,” he says. “Noth¬ 
ing to be ashamed of.” 

“And we’ll keep up all our enterprises,” says 
I, “while we’re sawing wood?” 

150 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Sure. Can’t give up any paying business. 
That lawn mowing is bringing us in good 
money, and so is the route, and we must make 
ten or eleven dollars out of pop corn and re¬ 
freshments every week.” 

“Say,” says I, “I’ll bet there are men that 
aren’t making any more than we are right 
now.” 

“Then,” says he, “they ought to be ashamed 
of themselves.” 

“Of course,” says I, “there are heaps of men 
that haven’t got the ideas we’ve got.” 

“Well,” he says, “that’s something in our 
favor. But honest, Wee-wee, I’d hate to have 

some of the ideas you’ve got.” 

0 

“Oh, you would,” says I, “and I’d hate to 
hate myself like you do.” 

“Such as my partner,” he says, and then he 
grinned and got up. “Let’s find out all about 
stove wood so we’ll know what we’re at. We 
don’t want to go and do any jumping in the 
dark.” “ • 

“You bet not,” says I. 

So we started out, and the first place we went 
to was the coal yard, and there was Lant Par¬ 
sons sitting in his office. We went in and Lant 
asked what in tunket we wanted. Catty told 
him we just dropped in. 

151 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“All right,” he says, “now just drop out 
again.” 

“Sure,” says Catty, “but have you got any 
stove wood to sell ?” 

“No, nor I haven’t got anything else to sell. 
I haven’t a chunk of coal, and pretty soon folks 
is goin’ to be hollerin’ their heads off. Say, I 
can’t git coal to save my life. I’ll bet before 
spring comes folks in this town ’ll be burning 
up the dinin’ room table to keep warm.” 

“Bad as that, eh? Why?” 

“Coal strike,” says he. 

“Um. . . . And you haven’t any wood ?” 

“Nary stick.” 

“If you did have any, what would you sell it 
for ?” 

“Depend.” 

“On what ?” 

“On how much it cost me.” 

“Well, how much would it cost you?” 

“How do I know?” 

“Didn’t you ever sell any stove wood?” 

“Yes.” 

“How much?” 

“Dollar and a quarter a cord, delivered. 
Cost a quarter more a cord to split and pile.” 

That hit us hard in the stummicks, until 
Catty says, “When was that?” 

152 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Eighteen eighty-two/’ he says. 

“Yes,” says I, “but haven’t you sold any 
since that ? Didn’t you sell any last year ?” 

“I did.” 

“How much?” 

“About fifty cord,” says he. 

“I mean how much a cord.” 

“Five-fifty, and dummed if I don’t b’lieve I 
lost money on it.” 

“Wonder what folks would be willing to pay 
for wood this year?” 

“Before they get through with it,” he says, 
“they’ll be willing to pay almost anythin’—or 
freeze to death. But they won’t be able to git 
any. Nobody’ll saw up stove wood any more, 
seems as though. Dunno why, they jest hain’t 
doin’ it.” 

“Would they pay six dollars a cord?” 

“Yes. . . .” He scowled and remembered he 
had been talking sort of pleasant, and says, 
“What business is it of your’n what they’d pay? 
Git out of here and quit pesterin’ me. Git, ’fore 
I boot ye.” 

We got, but we knew a lot more about the 
wood business than when we went in, and it 
looked more and more to us like an enterprise 
that was going to be a paying one if we could 
get it to working. 


153 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“What next?” says I. 

“Men,” says Catty. “See what we can hire 
men for.” 

“How ’ll we find that out?” 

“Catch a man, put salt on his coat tails, and 
ask him.” 

Well, we met old Socrates Goodman on the 
street, and we stopped him, because we knew he 
worked sometimes and ought to know what 
men were paid. 

“Mr. Goodman,” says Catty, “if you were to 
take a job right now, how much would you 
want a day ?” 

“I’d want a hundred dollars,” says old Soc¬ 
rates, “but I wouldn’t git it.” 

“How much would you get?” 

“Mebby four dollars.” 

“Uh-huh, and for four dollars how many 
cords of wood could you saw on a buzz saw?” 

“Dunno. I s’pose I could saw five-six hun- 
derd cords, mebby a thousand. Never set out 
to see how much work I could do in a day. 
Nobody’d ever let me. No, sir. I work too 
hard and too fast. I’m too good a worker. 
Men that hires me alius says to me, ‘Soc, re¬ 
member most men hain’t as good as you be, so 
hold back on the britchinV If you work full 
tilt you’ll up and kill the rest of the gang. So 

154 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


I alius takes it right easy—and then does about 
three men’s labor.” 

“Well, taking it easy, how much would you 
saw ?” 

“Not a doggone stick,” says he, “because I 
hain’t got no taste fer sawin’. It aches my 
back. But if you’re lookin’ for a man to saw 
wood, why don’t you go talk to Sam Print? 
He’s got him one of them gasoline buzz saws, 
and he ort to know all about it.” 

Well, we set out hotfoot for Mr. Print’s to 
ask about his buzz saw, and just as we got 
there a little automobile came driving up, and 
in it was young Toop, and out he jumped 
and ran right up to Mr. Print’s front door 
and knocked. 


155 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


I T kind of gave me a start to see young Toop 
going there, and I said right off to Catty 
that I’d bet there was a haze over the moon. 
He didn’t say anything, but his mouth sort of 
got straight and determined-like, and you could 
see in a minute that young Toop was in for 
hard labor if he threw a monkey wrench in our 
machinery. Well, we went around to the back 
door, because out our way you don’t go to the 
front door unless you’re company or there’s a 
wedding or a funeral. Somehow it’s more 
friendly and homey just to go poking around 
the back. 

Mrs. Print came to the door, and we asked 
for her husband. She gave us a pleasant smile, 
because that’s the sort of person she is, and 
says, “He’s here, but another boy just came to 
see him. Why don’t you go right in ?” 

Catty kind of chuckled, and said he guessed 
we would, so we went through the dining room 
and into the parlor, where young Toop was 
sitting in all his glory and gabbing about five 
pecks to the bushel. Mr. Print looked up and 

156 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

says, "Gee, it’s raining boys on me to-day. 
What’s all the excitement?” 

"I came to talk business,” says Toop, kind 
of snooty, "and don’t care to be interrupted.” 

"All right, young feller. Go right ahead. 
Nobody’s got any check rein on you.” 

"Well,” says Toop, "I hear you own a saw 
and rent it out to saw wood.” 

"I do,” says Mr. Print. 

"Well,” says Toop, "I’m going into the wood 
business. My father’s clearing some land to 
make a lawn and a big garden and tennis courts 
and things, and he said I could have the trees 
that were cut down. He said it was time I was 
learning to be a business man, so he wants me 
to have that wood cut and sell it, and I get what¬ 
ever money comes from the sale.” 

"Um. . . . Sounds int’restin’. How much 
was you figgerin’ on payin’ for the use of my 
saw?” 

"That’s for you to say,” says Toop, and his 
voice was none too polite either. "It’s your 
saw.” 

"To be sure ’tis. You said a true word, 
sonny. S’pose you want to hire a man to run 
the saw, too?” 

"You don’t expect me to run it myself, 
certainly.” 


157 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Mr. Print grinned. “I dunno exactly what I 
would expect of you. Don’t know ye well 
enough yit. . . And then he turned to Catty. 
“Well, what kin I do for you folks?” 

“We came to see you about your saw,” says 
Catty. 

“Same saw?” 

“Identical,” says Catty, and he grinned that 
pleasant sort of fetching grin of his. “Popular 
saw you’ve got to-day.” 

“Goin’ to cut fishpoles?” says Mr. Print. 

“No,” says Catty, “we was kind of figuring 
on toothpicks. We’re all out of toothpicks at 
home, and dad told me I’d better saw up two 
or three cords before Sunday dinner. We ex¬ 
pect company, and, if the meat’s tough, we’ll 
probably need a lot.” 

“It’s a fust-rate toothpick saw,” says Mr. 
Print. 

“Look here,” says Toop, “I was here first, 
and I spoke first for that saw, and it’s mine.” 

“Your’n, eh?” says Mr. Print. “Looks like 
there was mebby a mistake some’eres. I kinder 
figgered it was mine.” 

“Anyhow I spoke for it, and I got the money 
to pay for it, and these kids haven’t. Why my 
father-” 

“Yes ?” says Mr. Print kind of interested-like. 

158 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

*■ 

“My father’s a millionaire, and he could buy 
your whole farm and throw it away if he 
wanted to, and he could buy this whole town. 
That’s what he could.” 

“Um. . . . Pervidin’ I’d sell out to him,” 
says Mr. Print. “Money’s a nice thing to own, 
but it hain’t a nice thing to be owned by. Re¬ 
member what old Abe Lincoln said once? He 
says, says he, that no matter how tall or how 
short a feller was, his legs was alius just long 
enough to reach to the ground. Guess that goes 
for millionaires.” 

Toop didn’t have anything to say to this, but 
he sat looking pretty sulky and disagreeable, 
so Mr. Print says to Catty, “Well, you heard 
what this feller’s got to say. He spoke first for 
my saw. Why sh’u’d I let it to you instid of 
him?” 

“Well,” says Catty, “you aren’t obligated to 
let it to anybody.” 

“That’s true.” 

“And you’re entitled to pick out the one you 
do let it to.” 

“Fact.” 

“And to set your own price.” 

“Sure.” 

“And all things being equal, a man would 
rather do business with his friends that has just 

159 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


ordinary good manners, than with a stranger 
that hasn’t any manners at all.” 

Well, Mr. Print was like to bust out laughing 
at that, but he didn’t. He only said that was 
a fair statement of fact. 

“Besides,” says Catty, “no man wants to 
make a bargain until all the bids are in, does 
he? It ain’t good business to close with the 
first offer, because the second offer might be a 
lot better.” 

“What you say’s got sense in it,” says Mr. 
Print. “What’s your offer, Catty?” He turned 
to Toop and says, “Your proposition, I under¬ 
stand, is to rent my saw for what I decide to 
charge for it ?” 

“That’s my offer,” says Toop. 

“And you stand by it ?” 

“I got the money, all right.” 

“Good. Now, Catty, what’s your prop¬ 
osition?” 

“It’s this,” says Catty. “Wee-wee and I are 
going into business, not just to play, but like 
regular business men. We will rent your saw, 
but we want to hire you with it, for four dollars 
a day. That is, we’ll pay you four dollars a 
day to manage the saw, and pay rent besides. 
Or we’ll hire you to run it, and buy the saw 
outright at a fair price.” 

'160 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“How much ?” says Mr. Print. 

“Well, that saw and engine and outfit cost 
you two hundred even when you bought it sec¬ 
ond hand. You’ve used it a year. We’ll give 
you a hundred and twenty-five for it.” 

“How long will this job of work last?” says 
Mr. Print, like he was amused. 

“Till snow flies, and if things keep up right, 
all winter.” 

“Say,” says Mr. Print, “what be you gittin’ 
at? D’ye mean you kids is prepared to offer 
me a stretch of stiddy work?” 

“We do.” 

“What you got back of you—sort of guar¬ 
anteed’ you ? This feller here’s got a million¬ 
aire dad.” 

“We got a reputation for dealing square and 
for keeping our word, and for ’tending to busi¬ 
ness,” says Catty. 

Mr. Print just looked a minute, and then he 
slapped his knee. “Dummed if that hain’t an 
ample sufficiency,” says he. “You git the saw.” 

“Huh. My dad ’ll buy me a saw from the 
city,” says Toop. “It’ll be a better saw ’n yours, 
and I’ll show you. I’ll show you till you’re 
mighty sick of it.” 

With that he got up and put his hat on right 
in the house and marched out to his car. After 

161 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


that we talked business with Mr. Print and got 
a lot of valuable pointers. He said he would 
haul his saw out to the workings in the morn¬ 
ing, and would have two other men and a team 
on the job, too—good workers, he said, and he 
thought he could get them for three-fifty a day. 

Well, that finished up that part of the deal, 
and you better believe we were pretty well satis¬ 
fied with it. We had our crew all ready, and 
nothing to do now but start to work—except 
to sell the wood. 

“I knew something would come up to mess 
things,” says I. “This Toop kid ’ll sell wood 
for anything he can get. He don’t care whether 
he makes money or not, because all he makes 
he gets, and dad pays the bills.” 

“Maybe,” says Catty, kind of grand, “he’ll 
disturb the market some, but I don’t believe his 
output ’ll be big enough to create a serious 
condition.” 

“Um. . . .” says I, “what book did you get 
that out of?” 

“I didn’t,” he says, “that’s just plain, ordi¬ 
nary business talk, like business men talk every 
day.” 

“Do they know what it means,” says I, “or is 
it just noise like a college yell?” 

“As soon as you are familiar with condi- 

162 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


tions,” says Catty, “such matters will be clear 
to you/’ 

“Gosh,” says I, “that's fine. Talk it some 
more. It's a regular language by itself, isn't 
it? Like French or hog Latin. Honest, do 
business men talk it right out to each other ?” 

“Of course,” says Catty. 

“I’m going to learn me some of it and spring 
it on dad at the supper table. Bet it '11 knock 
him clean out of his chair. What was the 
first one again? It had a kind of a zing to it. 
Um. . . . 'Disturb the market some,' that was 
it, wasn’t it? With words like 'output' and 
such thrown in. Say a lot more and say it often 
so I’ll get used to it.” 

“Wee-wee,” says he, “there are times when 
I think you are trying to josh me.” 

“You’re wrong,” says I. “I couldn't bear to 
do it.” 

“Now,” says he, “we want to canvass the 
situation.” 

“Whoop!” I says, “that one’s the best yet.” 

He didn’t pay any attention. “We want to 
find out how much wood this town can absorb.” 

“Absorb.” That’s what he said. The very 
word. I got what it meant, but it sounded 
right funny. A blotter absorbs ink, but a town 
absorbing wood is something else again. I 

163 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


could see a picture right before my eyes of a 
town sucking in piles of wood like a blotter 
sucks in ink. I most busted out laughing, but 
I didn’t dare. He was so serious I didn’t even 
dare grin. But I saved it up to laugh about 
when I got home to bed. 

“We’ve got to find out how much wood this 
town uses normally,” says he, and he got that 
one out easier than any of the rest. “It must 
burn a certain number of cords every winter, 
whether there’s a coal strike or not. And with 
a coal strike, we’ve got to estimate how much 
more will be consumed.” That’s what he said. 
Just as if he read it out of a book. I was kind 
of staggered. 

“All right,” says I, “let’s go and measure up 
how much she absorbs.” 

“Good,” says he. “I’d explain to you what 
the saturation point was, if I had time, but I 
sha’n’t. I will some other time when we aren’t 
so busy.” 

“Much obliged,” says I, and right then and 
there I made up my mind I’d dig up a string of 
business words to spring on him, and when I 
did, I says to myself, I’ll make his saturation 
point look like somebody had knocked the point 
right off of it. 


164 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


“TTTHAT,” says I, “are we going to do 

V V about Pawky? Or are we just going 
to hide him all the rest of our lives ?” 

“I wonder/’ says Catty. 

“Seems to me,” says I, “he’d be better off to 
give his static invention to Toop or anybody 
else, and be free to go around about his busi¬ 
ness, than to stay hiding the way he is. There 
isn’t any money and there isn’t any pleasure 
in it.” 

“That’s right,” says Catty. 

“Well, what’s the answer?” 

“The answer isn’t printed in the back of the 
book,” says Catty. “We’ve got to work out the 
example.” 

“Maybe,” says I, “but I haven’t got that far 
in arithmetic. I guess Pawky comes under the 
head of higher mathematics.” 

“He comes under the head of darn nui¬ 
sances,” says Catty. 

Whatever head he came under, there he was, 
right back of our partition, and always in our 
minds. We couldn’t help thinking and worry- 

165 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


ing about him, and it was disturbing. When a 
man is a business man, like we were, he wants 
to give all his attention to his business, and not 
have a lot of side issues taking his attention 
off it. Business is something that has to be 
watched and worked at, and thought about and 
slept over. Just as soon as something else 
comes along that takes your attention away, 
why, you’re out of luck. Business first, last, 
and all the time, is the only way—but we were 
fixed so we couldn't do it that way. 

Pawky was such a funny person, too. You 
never could tell what he’d be up to, or when he 
might get absent-minded and just walk out into 
the middle of the street or some fool thing, and 
then Toop would be down on him like a hen 
hawk. It wasn’t fun to think about it. I 
wished we could have kept him in the old light¬ 
house, but we couldn’t, so that was that. On 
the whole, he was safer where he was, and a lot 
easier to take care of. 

Well, we couldn’t stop to fiddle about him 
and his invention that day, because we had to 
find out how many cords of wood our town 
could absorb, like Catty said. Every time I 
said that it made me snicker. Golly, but folks 
do use words funny lots of times, and when 
they’re serious, too. 


166 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“How do we find out?” I asked Catty. “Do 
we go to every house and ask how much wood 
they burn?” 

“Take too long,” says he “we’ve got to hit on 
some way to make a fairly accurate estimate.” 

“Hop right to it,” says I. 

“Well, your folks haven’t a furnace. You’ve 
got one coal stove in the parlor, but you’ve got 
a wood stove in the dining room and you’ve got 
a wood stove in the kitchen. How many cords 
does your father buy in the fall?” 

“I know that doggone well,” says I, “because 
I have to split and pile it when it comes, and 
dad gives me a quarter a cord for doing it. 
There’s twenty-five cords of it, and I want to 
sit up in bed and announce that that’s a lot.” 

“Um. . . . There are about twelve hundred 
people in town; that would make about two 
hundred houses. Then there are stores, say 
twenty stores of all kinds, and four churches. 
If everybody used twenty-five cords that would 
be five thousand cords for the houses alone, 
wouldn’t it?” 

“Sounds so,” says I. 

“I know the Congo church heats with wood. 
They must use fifty to sixty cords.” 

“But I bet it’s given to them or something.” 

“Maybe. Anyhow, it’s safe to say that there 

167 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

aren't any five thousand cords burned here— 
not by a jugful. But if we cut it down to an 
average of five cords a house, there’s a thou¬ 
sand cords, without counting stores and the 
Masonic Hall and things like that. I think 
we’re safe on figuring a thousand cords.” 

“And you still think we can get six dollars 
a cord?” 

“I believe we can.” 

“So that’s six thousand dollars. Um. . . 

“But we’ve got competition. I wonder how 
many cords the Toop kid will cut?” 

“We ought to find out,” says I. “I don’t 
know how much clearing his father’s going 
to do.” 

“Know what I bet?” he says. 

“What ?” 

“Why, Toop’ll wait until he sees what we’re 
selling for, and then he’ll cut the price.” 

“But he doesn’t know we’re cutting any,” 
says I. 

“He’s no fathead, whatever else he may be. 
He was there when we bought the saw, wasn’t 
he?” 

“To be sure.” 

“So he’ll put two and two together.” 

“Maybe he won’t cut any on account of not 
having a saw,” says I. 

168 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“His pa’ll buy him a saw,” says Catty, and 
that, of course, is exactly what happened. 

That afternoon we dropped in on Lant Par¬ 
sons at the coal yard, just on the off chance he 
would be good natured for a few minutes, and 
he was. 

“Say,” he says,“ has all the kids in the state 
got interested in stove wood ?” 

“Why?” says Catty. 

“There was another one here asking me all 
kinds of questions about it, like you did.” 

“No. Who was he?” 

“That Toop boy that lives out at the lake.” 

“Oh. What was he interested in wood for ?” 

“It seems like his pa’s goin’ to clear some 
land, and he’s give the wood to the kid. He 
come nosin’ around to see what I’d give for it, 
or what it was wuth.” 

“What did you tell him?” 

“Told him I’d give him two-’n-a-half a cord, 
which I would,” says Parsons. “But he didn’t 
want to sell to me. He says whatever profit 
there was in it, he wanted himself.” 

“Urn. . . .” 

“But he wanted to make a deal with me, just 
the same. He says, says he, T guess I can sell 
wood cheaper than anybody else, because it 
doesn’t cost me anything. But I haven’t any 

169 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


sales force/ says he. And then he says, 'How’d 
you like to handle it for me on commission —so 
much a cord just for handling it?* ” 

“And what did you say?” 

“I said I might consider it, which I will do— 
if the commission’s enough.” 

“Did he say how much he expected to cut?” 

“Told me his father’s man estimated there’d 
be between four and five hundred cords.” 

“Didn’t set a price, did he?” 

“No, but he let on he’d undersell anybody 
else in the market.” 

Catty sat and thought a spell and then he 
got up and walked around and kicked the fence 
and made faces at himself, and then came 
back. 

“Lant,” he says, “would you like to make 
that commission awful easy?” 

“Sure thing.” 

“How much were you thinking of charging?” 

“Ten per cent.” 

“Um. ... If you could sell the whole ka- 
boodle at once, and no trouble to you at all, 
would you divide your commission ? I mean, if 
somebody came in and offered to take the whole 
lot, would you give him five per cent ?” 

“And me not turn over my hand?” 

“Exactly.” 


170 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 
“I’d do it." 

“Good. Then we’ll talk business. He’ll prob¬ 
ably sell cheaper if he can sell the lot at once. 
Sounds reasonable he should. Well, you go to 
him, and offer to take the whole kit and boiling 
off his hands, and see the best price you can 
squeeze him down to. See? If you get him 
low enough, maybe we’ll give you more 
commission." 

“Yep." 

“But you get a signed contract out of him. 
Understand that, and you tell him that, because 
he’s a kid, you want his father to sign that 
contract so as to make it legal. Get the idea?’’ 

“I do." 

“And make that contract guarantee delivery 
right here in your yard alongside the railroad, 
where it can be loaded on cars if we want to.’’ 

“Sure." 

“And make it guarantee to deliver by a cer¬ 
tain date." 

“Yep." 

“With an agreement that if he fails to deliver 
you can go on the land, and use his tools and 
saw and everything, and cut what the contract 
calls for and pay for it whatever price we agree 
on in the first place, less what it costs you to cut 
and haul here." 


171 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Sounds doggone businesslike. But what’s 
the idea?” 

“Tell you later. But it means business. 
There’s no monkey work about it. Now you go 
and see what you can do about price and every¬ 
thing, and then come to our office and talk some 
more.” 

“Who’s goin’ to buy all this wood?” 

“Never you mind that. We’ve got a buyer.” 

“Has he got th^ cash?” 

“He has to have to buy, doesn’t he? Cash on 
delivery.” 

“Sounds all right to me,” says Lant. “I’ll 
try to see him to-day.” 

“Good,” says Catty, and off he mogged, with 
me at his heels. 

“Say,” I says when we got out of earshot, 
“what’s the big idea? What you doing, 
anyhow?” 

“Trying to put a spoke in Toop’s wheel, and 
to stabilize the market,” he says. 

“Do what to the market ?” 

“Stabilize it,” he says. 

“Oh,” says I, “you mean you’re going to re¬ 
sort to keen methods of competition in order to 
force your competitors to realize that a state of 
normalcy has not yet been arrived at.” 

He stopped and looked me over for a minute 

172 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

and then he waggled his head. “Wee-wee/’ he 
says, “this firm’s going to be a great success. 
It’s whang-bang, chock-full of education, isn’t 
it?” 

“Yours of even date received,” says I, “and 
contents noted. But what’s this big talk to 
Lant Parsons? You don’t mean we’re going 
to buy five hundred cords of wood from Toop!” 

“If we can,” says he. 

“But,” says I, “at the lowest price, that’ll be 
around two thousand large, heavy dollars.” 

“I know it,” says he. 

“We haven’t got it, not a fraction of it.” 

“Right, Wee-wee.” 

“Then how are we going to get away 
with it?” 

“I’d give a lead dollar and a pound of peanuts 
if I knew/' says he. 


173 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


F ROM now on you’d better believe we were 
pretty busy. I don’t believe there were ever 
two kids who had as much to do, and on top of 
our business matters was Pawky. There he 
was, hid up in our back room, and what the 
dickens were we to do with him, and that’s 
what I said to Catty. 

“Look here,” says I, “in thirty or forty years 
Pawky’s whisker’s ’ll grow so long they ’ll fill 
up this place like it was a mow full of hay. We 
got to do something about him.” 

“Yes,” says Catty, “but I haven’t time to 
bother with it to-day, and Pawky’s happy.” 

“But,” says I, “it isn’t sensible to keep him 
cooped up here. If he had any sense he 
wouldn’t do it.” 

“Inventors haven’t any sense. That’s why 
they’re inventors,” Catty says, “and what we’re 
going to do with him in the long run I can’t see. 
His old invention’s safe, I guess.” 

“What does he want to do with it?” I says. 
“Don’t believe he knows.” 

“Then,” says I, “we’d better find out for 

174 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

him. Folks do something with inventions be¬ 
side hide them in caves.” 

“They patent ’em,” says Catty, “and then sell 
’em for a lot of money.” 

“Then,” says I, “let’s do that to Pawky’s. 
Because, sure as shootin’, somebody’s going to 
run on to him sooner or later.” 

“Right now,” says Catty, “I’m thinking 
about sawing stove wood and selling stove 
wood. We’ve contracted to buy all young Toop 
saws and we’ve got to have money to pay for 
it when he delivers it. If we don’t look out 
we’re going to be bankrupt before we get 
started.” 

“What for did you agree to buy it, then?” 

“Had to, didn’t we. Otherwise he’d have 
upset the market, and we wouldn’t have got our 
price for our own wood.” 

“Then,” says I, “the thing to do is to cut our 
wood and deliver it and get the money before 
Toop can cut and deliver his wood to us.” 

“We can try,” says Catty, “but we’ve got to 
find a quicker way than that if we can.” 

“Go to it,” says I. “The quicker the sooner.” 

“We better go out and see how things are 
getting along,” says he, so we got in our wagon 
and out we went. We knew there ought to be 
at least four men at work—two on the saw and 

175 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


two with the team, and we hoped they were 
working good and hard, because we had to pay 
them money for it. I said to myself that if we 
found them sitting on a stump telling stories, 
I’d be pretty sore. Well, that was the first time 
it ever struck me just what it means to work 
for anybody, and that it isn’t fair to take wages 
and then loaf. No, sir. If a man pays you for 
eight hours’ work, then it’s your business to 
give him eight hours’ work. Just like buying 
eggs. If you buy twelve eggs the grocer 
mustn’t give you ten and eat the other two 
himself. That wouldn’t be honest. You never 
can tell when an idea like that comes to you. 
I mentioned it to Catty, and he told me I’d bet¬ 
ter be careful or I’d get a headache. 

Well, things were going along pretty well. 
The team was hauling big limbs from the slash¬ 
ings and the saw was buzzing, and a pile of 
wood was growing that made me feel pretty 
good. 

“Why,” says I, “we can start delivering right 
off and begin to make money.” 

“Yes,” says Catty, “and that’s what we’re 
going to do. We’ve got to hire another team 
and wagon and man.” 

So back we went to town and fussed around 
till we got a man with a couple of horses and 

176 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


the kind of a wagon we could haul wood on, 
and then we started deliveries. You’d better 
believe it felt good, because what I wanted was 
to see the money coming in instead of going 
out. And so we got that started, and there was 
nothing to do but hustle for more orders and 
tend to the rest of our business, and worry 
about where we were going sell the wood we 
bought from young Toop. 

By the end of that week we had called on 
everybody in town, and taken every order for 
wood that was to be got. It was a lot of wood, 
too, but the way Catty figured it, we could 
deliver it all from our own cuttings and would 
have Toop’s five hundred cords left over to dis¬ 
pose of, and we’d have to pay for it, and it 
began to look to me like we’d be left with it on 
our hands, which would eat up every cent of 
profit we made, and a lot more besides. The 
way it seemed to me we would have all our 
work for nothing except to find we owed a lot 
of money we never could pay. 

“Fine lot of millionaires we’ll be,” says I to 
Catty. 

“What you worrying about?” says he. “If 
money was to be made without any trouble at 
all, everybody’d be rich. It’s the fellow who 
can put through a deal that other folks couldn’t 

177 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

put through who gets to be a millionaire. The 
more impossible this looks the better I like it.” 

“Everybody to his taste,” says I, “as the 
man said to the boy who ate the angleworm.” 

Just then Pawky began to call, as careless as 
if he wasn’t hiding at all. 

“I say, you boys. Come here. Right away. 
There’s something I want you to do.” 

“There generally is,” says Catty, “what’s 
this one?” 

“I’ve just thought up an improvement,” 
says he. 

“To what?” says I? 

“To the device for eliminating static,” he 
says. “It’s a simple thing, too. Funny I never 
hit on it before. . . . Now I’ve got to have my 
instrument and the drawings. Where are they ? 
I want them right off—now.” 

“They’re hidden, and you know it,” says 
Catty. 

“Well, go get them,” says Pawky. 

“We’re bust,” says Catty. 

“Tell me how to get to them, and I’ll—I’ll go 
myself,” he says. 

“You can’t,” says I, “you’re hiding. You 
stay right where you are. D’you think we’re 
going to take all the trouble we have to hide 
you, and then have you go prancing out in the 

178 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


broad daylight, to have Mister Toop drop down 
on you like a hawk on a henyard? Not much. ,, 

“I got to have that instrument,” says he, as 
stubborn as a mule. 

“All right,” says Catty, “we’ll get it for you 
the first chance we have. It’s safer where it is. 
Nobody can find it. But if you think you’ve 
got to have it, why, that’s all there is to it.” 

“When will you get it?” says he. It seemed 
like he couldn’t take care of more than one idea 
at a time. 

“To-day,” says Catty, “if we can dodge 
Toop’s spies.” 

“We can’t,” says I. “And this thing is just 
made to order for them. What happens if they 
trail us out to the cave, and see us get that box? 
Why, in about two jerks of a lamb’s tail, they’ll 
snake it away from us, and then the fat’s in the 
fire.” 

“Got to take the chance,” says Catty, and he 
seemed kind of tickled that he had to. Now 
I’m not that way. When I’m safe I like to be 
safe. I don’t run around hankering for trouble, 
or to take risks, but Catty! Huh! All you 
have to do is to show him how he’s got to take a 
big risk and he goes for it like a puppy after 
a ham bone. 

“Anyhow,” says I, “we’ve got to go out and 

179 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

see how business is getting along. That's got 
to be seen first. And we ought to sneak around 
and find out how much wood young Toop's got 
cut, because he's going to start delivering to 
the coal yard one of these days, and we've got 
to have money to pay him with. If he starts in 
too sudden, we’ll be in the soup.” 

“So long as we have a spoon when we fall in 
instead of a fork,” says Catty, “we’ll come out 
all right.” 

So we mogged out to our job. As we got 
closer I listened for the putt-putt of the engine 
and the buzz of the saw, but I couldn't hear it, 
and I says to Catty, “Sounds kind of still, 
don't it?” 

He cocked his ear and kind of scowled. 
“Wonder what’s wrong,” he says. “They’re 
not working.” 

We hit the horse a larrup and he almost trot¬ 
ted. If he had gone twice as fast as he was 
going he’d have been going about half as fast 
as a regular horse. But he got there. You 
could always say that. If you gave him time 
enough, he’d take you where you wanted to go. 

We jumped out and ran through the woods 
to the clearing where the saw was set up, and 
there it was, and it wasn’t buzzing a buzz. Mr. 
Print was sitting alongside of it, looking sort of 

180 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

sour, and there was a big heap of wood, sawed 
to stove length, just behind him—all they had 
cut in a week, and it was a pretty good mess. 

“What’s the matter ?” says I. 

Mr. Print grunted. 

“Toop kid,” says he. 

“What’s he been up to?” 

“Hired all our men away. Give ’em each a 
half dollar a day more ’n we were, and they 
up and quit.” 

“But you didn’t,” says Catty. 

“When I take a job, I take it,” says Mr. 
Print. “When I make a bargain, why, I cal- 
c’late to stand by it, deep snow or flood water. 
So here I be, but I might’s well be in Jericho 
fer all the good I’m doin’.” 

“‘What was Toop’s rush about getting more 
men?” says Catty. 

“He didn’t say, but I guess he was sore about 
not getting my saw off of me, and he done it to 
be mean. Looks like a kid that would git mean 
if a chance was give him.” 

“And maybe,” says Catty, “he’s boggled 
around and found out who it really was that 
bought all his wood. If he did, why then we’ve 
got to get a wiggle on us, because he’ll be deliv¬ 
ering so fast we won’t be able to pay.” 

“What’ll we do?” says I. 

181 


/ 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Get more men,” says Catty. 

“Where?” 

“Wherever there’s a man that will take a 
job,” says Catty, “and I guess we better leave it 
up to Mr. Print. He knows more about men 
and where to get them than we do. How about 
it, Mr. Print? Will you take on the job of get¬ 
ting us a new crew?” 

“Bet your life,” says Mr. Print. “If there’s 
anythin’ I kin do to put a spoke in that Toop 
kid’s wheel, you kin count on me.” 

“Fine,” says Catty. “Put on all the men you 
can use, and get an extra team for delivering 
if you can—maybe two. We want to rush 
things. . . . We’re going to take a look to see 
how Toop’s getting along with his work.” 

“Drop a monkey wrench in his machinery,” 
says Mr. Print kind of savage-like. 

We piled into our wagon again and drove out 
toward the lake. We had business there with 
our route anvhow, and while we were at it we 
could get a line on Toop’s stove-wood operation, 
which we did. His saw was buzzing like all git 
out, and a gang of men were working all over 
the place, chopping and clearing and swamping, 
and hauling to the saw. More men were piling, 
and getting the wood in shape to load. I felt 
my stomach turn over twice when I saw how 

182 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


much they had cut. If I was any guesser at all, 
they had close to a hundred cords. It was a 
lot, and if we had to raise the money to pay 
for even that much—why, we just naturally 
couldn’t. 

For a while we snooped around, and saw all 
there was to see. Then Catty says, “Well, 
there’s nothing else to be done. Let’s see if we 
can get to the cave after Pawky’s box.” 

“ ’Twon’t be safe,” says I, “because some¬ 
body was driving along behind us as we came, 
and I’ll bet I know who it was.” 

“Sure,” says Catty. “It was one of them, all 
right, but we’ve fooled them before, and we 
ought to be able to fool them again.” 

“The time’s coming,” says I, “when the fool¬ 
ing will get on the wrong foot.” 

“Can’t be helped,” says he. 

“Dad says the pitcher that goes to the well 
too often is bound to get smashed.” 

“Well,” says he, “it has a lot more fun than 
the pitcher that never gets moved off the shelf.” 
And I guess there was something in that. 


183 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


T HE thing to make sure of before we head 
in for the cave/’ says Catty, “is that we 
aren’t being followed.” 

“But we are being,” says I. “I told you I 
saw somebody.” 

“Anyhow,” he says, “it’s safest to act as if 
we knew we were. We’ll go up the road a piece 
and turn off and wait. Then if somebody 
comes along, we’ll see them.” 

So that’s what we did. We pulled off the 
road and sat there for fifteen minutes. Noth¬ 
ing happened and nobody came along, so we 
made up our minds it was safe, and started off 
for the cave. On the way over Catty had us 
make believe we were scouts in an Indian coun¬ 
try and that there were savages behind every 
other tree. About half the time he had us 
crawling along on our stomachs, and squirming 
through underbrush, and getting all mussed up 
for no reason at all—not that I mind getting 
mussed up, but I hate the hard work of it. 

In that way we passed the old lighthouse 
where Pawky had been hidden and came to the 

184 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


cave. Before we went in we did a lot more 
crawling around in circles and hiding our trail, 
because Catty said the Indians didn’t know 
about the cave, and we would be safe in there 
unless they saw us go in—but if they saw us 
go in, why, our goose was cooked good and 
plenty, and our scalps would be hanging on the 
big chief’s back fence. At last we got to it, and 
it seemed to me that not even a chipmunk could 
have seen us. Maybe a chipmunk didn’t—but 
there are other things beside chipmunks. 

“Now,” says Catty, “we’ll wait for a few 
minutes more—just for the sake of the extra 
precaution, and then we’ll dig out the box and 
beat it for home.” 

“Seems to me we’ve used up all the precau¬ 
tion we got in stock,” says I. “I know I’m all 
out of it.” 

“Well, I’ve got some left,” he says, kind of 
short, “so we’ll use up mine.” 

We sat down on the floor and waited, not 
saying a word, and I counted, just to see how 
long Catty would go on with his monkey busi¬ 
ness. I counted and counted and counted, and 
was just getting to nine hundred and ninety-six 
when a lot of gravel and stuff began to slide 
down in front of the cave off the hillside, 
and then came a pair of legs past the open- 

185 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

ing and a man dropped kerplunk right at the 
door! 

“There,” says Catty in a whisper. “It’s the 
last extra precaution that does the trick.” 

“We’d ’a’ had it and been gone,” I says right 
back to him. 

“Yes, and been followed up, too,” he says. 

Then we sat quiet, hoping maybe the man 
wouldn’t see the cave, but you might as well ex¬ 
pect anybody not to see a hen light on the end of 
his nose. The man stood a minute, and then 
he ducked his head and came in. It was the 
biggest one of Mr. Toop’s snoopers. 

“Howdy,” says he. “I kind of thought if I 
watched you kids long enough you’d show me 
something.” 

“Good for you,” says Catty. “I kind of 
thought we got here without being seen.” 

The man laughed. “I was up on the hill 
watching you with these,” and he showed us a 
pair of binoculars. “You sure done a lot of 
wrigglin’ around. Nice little cave you got here. 
Is this all there is to it, or is there another 
room somewheres?” 

“This,” says Catty, “is the whole layout.” 

“Somehow,” says the man, “I don’t believe 
you. I’ve got an idea there’s an opening and 
another room big enough to hold a man. And 

186 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

I've got the idea there’s a man in it by the name 
of Pawky.” 

Catty grinned. “Hope you’re right,” he says. 
“We’d like this cave if it was bigger, and if you 
can find another room we’ll be much obliged to 
you.” 

“I’ll find it, all right,” says the man, and with 
that he began snooping around and prying 
around, but in about five minutes he saw there 
wasn’t any other room to be found, and he 
looked mighty disappointed. 

“Say,” he says, “what you kids doing here, 
anyhow? There isn’t any place for Pawky to 
hide. Or is he going to meet you here ?” 

“Who ?” says Catty. 

“Mr. Pawky.” 

“No Mr. Pawky’s going to meet us here.” 

“Then what are you here for ?” 

“Playing Indian,” says Catty. “We’re hid¬ 
ing from the redskins. . . . Say, Wee-wee, we 
can pretend this gentleman is an Indian spy 
that’s discovered our hiding place. That’ll 
make the game a lot more interesting.” 

“You can’t fool me,” says the man, “you’re 
here for something more than playin’ a silly 
game. No, sir. I’ve watched you kids, and I 
know that when you do a thing there’s some 
reason behind it.” 


187 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Like prowling around in strawberry 
patches/’ says Catty with a grin. 

“Huh,” says the man, “so you were behind 
that, were you? Pretty good, for kids. Well, 
I don’t hold any grudge. But what I want to 
know is what you’re doing here—and I’m going 
to find out.” 

“Go ahead,” says Catty. “You’re welcome to 
keep on looking.” 

“You’re going to tell me,” says the man. 

“Let’s see—this is Thursday,” says Catty, 
“and we never tell things on Thursday.” 

“You’re mixing in an affair that’s none of 
your business,” says the man, “and you’re 
bound to get into trouble.” 

“Trouble,” says Catty, “it what we eat for 
breakfast food every morning.” 

“Where’s Pawky?” 

“I wish I could tell you. Really, I’d like to be 
able to, and save you all this hard work of look¬ 
ing for him.” 

The man sat down and lighted his pipe and 
thought about it. He had his mind made 
up we were there for something, and that 
he ought to find out about it, and he was try¬ 
ing to figure things out. I guess he was a 
slow thinker, but after a while he got an 
idea. 


188 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Maybe,” says he, “you’ve got something hid 
in this cave, and you’ve come to get it.” 

“You never can tell,” says Catty. 

“And maybe it’s something that belongs to 
Mr. Pawky.” 

“Well,” says Catty, “for a guesser, you al¬ 
ways guess what you’d like to have happen. 
Here’s the cave. It’s free as air. Help 
vourself.” 

“I’m going to,” says he, and he started in 
again to paw all around, but it didn’t do him 
a bit of good. He pawed everywhere except 
where the box was hidden. After a while he 
got discouraged, and sat down again. 

“Now,” says he, “I hate to be disagreeable, 
but I’m going to sit right here until you boys 
tell me what I want to know. I don’t believe 
anybody knows where you are, and I’ll bet 
you’ll be getting hungry by supper time. Now, 
then, how about it?” 

“Sorry to disappoint you,” says Catty. 

“You admit you know where Pawky is?” 
says he. 

Catty looked at me, kind of surprised. “I 
didn’t hear you admit anything like that,” says 
he. “Did you hear me ?” 

“No,” says I. “I guess this gentleman must 
have made a mistake.” 


189 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Well, one mistake I’m not going to make is 
to let you get away from me before you do tell,” 
says he. 

“He likes jails,” Catty says to me. 

“If I get into one Mr. Toop ’ll get me out,” 
says the man. 

“Good for him,” says Catty, “but what if he 
gets into one himself?” 

“Say,” I says, “what’s the idea? What is 
everybody looking for this man Pawky for?” 

“Everybody isn’t,” says the man. 

“Quite a lot of folks are,” says Catty. 

“What d’ye mean?” says the man. 

“What ’ll you give me if I’ll tell you some¬ 
thing interesting?” 

“I’ll let you go home.” 

“Much obliged for nothing. We just came 
away from home. But, just to kind of get you 
excited, what would you say if I told you there 
was a man in town who was an officer of the 
Universal Electric Company, and that he was 
looking all over for this Mr. Pawky you talk 
so much about.” 

“What’s that? What’s that?” 

“Mind,” says Catty. “I didn’t say there was 
such a man. I just asked you what you’d think 
of it if there was.” 

“Um. . . .” says the man. 

190 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

‘Til bet,” says Catty, “that Mr. Toop would 
want to know about it right off, wouldn’t he?” 

“Say, where’d you see this Electric feller?” 

“Didn’t say I saw him. . . . With all the 
men Toop’s got parading around the country, 
you’d think they’d have noticed a stranger like 
that, wouldn’t you?” 

“Somebody,” says the man, “is going to ketch 
what for—and I hope it isn’t me.” 

“You’d better go see about it,” says Catty. 

The man looked at him kind of suspicious. 
“You’re awful anxious to get me out of this 
place, ain’t you ?” 

“Well,” says Catty, “we didn’t invite you 
here, you know. If we’d wanted you, we’d 
have asked you to come.” 

“I don’t believe there was any man like you 
said.” 

“I didn’t say. I just asked. . . . Anyhow, 
what good is it going to do you to keep us 
here?” 

“I’m going to keep you right here until you 
tell me where Pawky is, or where that mess of 
contraptions of his is.” 

“Wee-wee,” says Catty to me, “we’ve got 
important business to look after. Every minute 
counts with us now. We can’t afford to stay 
here.” 


191 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Looks like we couldn't help ourselves/' 
says I. 

“It's all right," says Catty, “to keep on look¬ 
ing after somebody else's interests, but when it 
comes to a point where you can’t do it any more 
without getting into a mess yourself—why, 
you've got to look after yourself." 

I couldn’t get the idea. It sounded as if 
Catty was wanting to give in, and turn Pawky 
over to the enemy. But I couldn’t believe that. 
It wasn’t like Catty. Why, he was the kind 
of fellow who would stick a thing through and 
be true to his friends if somebody started to 
pick off his legs one by one. 

“What are you talking about?" says I. 

“Business," says he. 

“Now you’re talking, young fellow," says the 
man. 

“But," says I, “you don't mean—you don’t 
honestly mean you’re wanting to turn traitor to 
Pawky?" 

“I’m not wanting to," says he, “but look at 
our stove-wood deal, and how it's needing us 
this minute, and how Pawky has interfered 
right along. We ought to give every second of 
our time to it. We don’t owe Pawky anything, 
and we've done more for him than he has any 
right to expect." 


192 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“It don’t make any difference,” says I, get¬ 
ting kind of mad. “We’re in the thing, and we 
can’t get out—not and be decent.” 

“Well,” he says, like he was kind of ashamed, 
“you can do what you like, but there’s too much 
money going to be lost for me to go and be 
foolish. I’m going to tell.” 

“Catty Atkins,” says I, “I’ve stuck to you 
through thick and thin, but if you go and do 
such a thing as this, I’ll never speak to you 
again as long as I live.” 

“Oh,” says he, “you won’t feel that way 
about it when you think it over.” And with 
that he turned to the man and says, “Y'ou’ll let 
us go if we tell you where we hid that box with 
Pawky’s invention in it?” 

“You bet,” he says. 

“Well,” says Catty, and he didn’t let me catch 
his eye, “just go over there to your right. See 
that stone that looks as if it was a part of the 
cave wall? Behind that is a little shelf, and 
that’s where we hid the box.” 

“Catty Atkins!” says I, and I thought I’d 
start right in to bawl. It was about the worst 
thing I ever heard of. I wouldn’t have believed 
he could be so low down as to do it. 

The man rushed over to the spot where we 
had hid the box and began working at the 

193 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


stone. I saw Catty edge toward the door, and 
he motioned to me to come, but I wouldn't. I 
made up my mind I’d stay there till I starved 
to death, I was so ashamed, and I had a kind 
of an idea that maybe I could fight the man, or 
grab the box and run, or something like that. 
Catty kept on motioning hard, but I wouldn’t 
move, and then he disappeared. He just ducked 
and ran. I felt pretty scared, but I was bound 
I was going to do something. 

The man got the stone loose, and I sneaked 
over behind him. He shoved his arm into the 
hole, and I looked, ready to grab. But I pretty 
nearly keeled over. That hiding place where 
we had put the box was empty. There wasn’t 
a thing in it. ... I just had sense enough left 
to turn and run like the mischief out of the 
cave. 


194 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


AS I got out on the hillside I heard the man 
let out a yell, and that didn’t make me go 
any slower. I had just one piece of business to 
attend to then, and that was to get as much 
distance between me and that spot as there was, 
and it didn’t look like there was enough distance 
in the world to satisfy me. 

I stumbled and tumbled and scratched mvself 
all up, but I kept going, and after a while I got 
to the wagon and there was Catty sitting up 
on the seat as big as life and twice as natural. 

“Hello,” says he. 

“You drive right along,” says I, “I’m going 
to walk.” 

“What’s the idea ?” says Catty. 

“Why,” says I, “you and I are through. I 
don’t ride with or talk to a fellow that gives 
away folks that trust him.” 

“Don’t blame you a bit,” says Catty. “What 
did Mister Man do when he found the box? 
Kiss you?” 

“No,” says I, “he didn’t kiss me.” 

“Well, what did he do ?” 

195 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“I didn’t wait to see,” says I. 

“Um. ... I kind of depended on you to stay 
and take the box away from him,” says Catty. 
“I thought of course you’d step right up and 
grab it.” 

“I would have,” says I, “or anyhow I’d have 
tried.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Because,” says I, “there wasn’t any box 
there.” 

“No! There wasn’t any box there, eh ? Then 
it looks like I wasn’t such a traitor after all.” 

“You meant to be,” says I. 

“Well,” he says, “there’s something in that.” 

“Drive along,” says I. 

“It’s easier to ride than walk.” 

“Not with you,” says I. “I’d rather crawl.” 

“Um. . . says he, “two wrongs don’t 
make a right. Just because I’ve done some¬ 
thing you think is mean doesn’t make a good 
reason for you to throw me down when I’m 
needing you in the business. Besides, you’ve 
got as much in it as I have.” 

“You can have it,” says I. 

“Can I have what we’ll owe if we go bust?” 

Well, I had to kind of stop and think over 
that, and I did, and when I’d thought a while 
I says, “All right. I’ll stick till this deal is over 

196 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


one way or another. But it’s just business. I 
don’t want anything to do with you that I don’t 
have to.” 

“Fine,” says he. “But that don’t stop me 
from talking to you, does it? If I get lonesome 
and want to tell you what a fine day it is, I can 
do that, can’t I ? You know I have to talk some, 
and just by accident I might let something slip 
out that wasn’t strictly business. You wouldn’t 
hold that up against me, would you?” 

“I’ll say this,” says I, “you don’t seem very 
much ashamed of yourself.” 

“People have different ways of being 
ashamed,” says he. “Climb up and we’ll begin 
to do business and nothing else. But first, we’d 
better hustle, because Mister Man may be com¬ 
ing along, and I’ll bet his disposition is all 
ruined to pieces.” 

I climbed on and we started off, but I felt 
pretty rotten, I can tell you. Catty didn’t say 
anything for a while and I didn’t look at him. 
Then he says, “The thing we’ve got to get right 
busy with is young Toop’s five hundred cords 
of wood. That’s the one thing we’ve got to take 
care of.” 

“And getting men to work for us.” 

“That,” says Catty, “has been taken care of 
by this time.” 


197 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“What if young Toop found out we were 
buying his wood?” says I. 

“He’d cut some kind of caper,” says Catty. 
“But he mustn’t find out. If we could only 
deliver that much wood of our own before he 
starts to deliver to us.” 

“Yes,” says I, “but that would only put off 
the trouble. We’ve sold every cord of wood 
this town will take, so far as I can see, and we’d 
only end up by having all Toop’s wood left on 
our hands, and a lot of money to pay besides.” 

“We’ll find a way out,” says he. 

“Somehow,” I says, “I don’t care much 
whether we do or not.” And after that we 
didn’t talk a great deal until we got to town, 
and we didn’t talk much then. I kept wonder¬ 
ing if Mr. Print had another crew at work, but 
Catty didn’t seem to be worried any about that, 
so I let it go. 

“We’d better go over the books of the com¬ 
pany and find out where we stand,” says Catty, 
“and how much cash we’ve got and how many 
orders for wood, and everything.” 

“I guess I know pretty well,” says I. 

“Well, maybe so,” he says. “Starting with 
the rowboat deal and working down through 
pop corn and grocery route and the hardware 
venture and cutting lawns and all, we’ve aver- 

198 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

aged up pretty well. Yes, sir, I think we've 
done pretty good.” 

He wanted to talk about it, and be kind of 
proud and all that, and I would have wanted to 
do the same thing the day before, but right now 
I didn't care. I didn't want to be proud of any¬ 
thing, or to talk about anything. What I 
wanted to do was to go off some place and hide 
and never see anybody again. You know, when 
you've had a lot of trust in a person, and always 
believed that person was about the best in the 
world, and you've admired them and been with 
them all the time, and then, without a bit of 
warning, that person goes and turns out to be 
different than you thought, and yellow and a 
traitor, why, it comes pretty close to kicking 
over your bucket of sap. It seemed to me like 
I'd never take any interest in life again, or ever 
trust a living soul. The worst of it was that 
Catty didn't seem to care. He just went along 
like he always does, and didn't look ashamed 
and didn't make any excuses or anything. That 
kind of hurt. If only he’d been a little sorry. 
But he wasn't. He acted just as if nothing had 
happened at all. 

“Let's go over to the wood yard,” says he. 
“Lant Parsons must have made the deal for us 
with Toop by this time. Well, if we can get 

199 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

away with it, it’ll be all right. Half of his com¬ 
mission besides what profit we can make on 
the resale.” 

So over we went and there was Lant. “Been 
waitin’ for you kids to show up,” says he. 

“Why?” 

“On account of that deal you was talkin’ up 
with me t’other day, with the Toop boy.” 

“Yes,” says Catty. 

“Wa-al, I had a kind of a talk with him.” 

“What’d he say?” 

“He says consid’able, he does. That’s one of 
the talkin’est, gabbiest kids I ever seen, but he’s 
sharp. He wanted I should tell him if I was 
buyin’ the wood myself, or if I was actin’ for 
somebody else.” 

“And what did you say?” 

“I told him I was actin’.” 

Catty waggled his head, but he didn’t say a 
word. “And then what did he say ?” I asked. 

“He wanted to know who I was actin’ fer.” 

“But you didn’t tell him.” 

“Not right off,” says Lant. 

“But you told him,” says Catty. “You went 
and told him. Didn’t I warn you special, Lant? 
Didn’t I tell you this was a secret and the deal 
would fall through if he found out we were 
in it?” 


200 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“I calc’late you did,” says Lant, “but I kind 
of lost sight of it, he talked so much. And then 
he asked right out if it was you, and I says it 
was.” 

“Then what ?” 

“He says the deal was off.” 

“Of course he did, but did he say what he 
was going to do ?” 

“No, but he looked tickled to death.” 

“Sure, and right after that he went and hired 
all our men, and now he'll be up to something, 
you can bet on that. Wee-wee, we’re in for 
hard trouble.” 

“What cfyou suppose he’ll do?” says I. 

“I don’t know, but I do know we won’t like 
it. We won’t care for it any more’n we would 
for kerosene on our potatoes.” 

“Anyhow,” says I, “we don’t have to raise all 
that money to buy it.” 

“Whatever happens now ’ll be worse than 
that. Gosh, I wish I could make a guess, and 
then maybe we could sort of get up a defense 
against it.” 

“It seems to me,” says I, “we’re doin’ a lot 
of worrying about what Toop can do to us. 
Isn’t he doing any worrying about what we can 
do to him?” 

Catty looked at me a minute and grinned. 

201 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“He doesn’t have to worry, because he’s safe, 
whatever happens. But we’ve got to hold up 
the market. You and I have got to make 
money, and he hasn’t. He can step out and sell 
for any price he wants to, so long as he gets 
back the cost of his labor. No, you and I are 
all the folks there are who have to worry.” 

“But can’t we make him worry?” 

“How?” 

“No idea,” says I, “but we ought to think 
about it, and get up some kind of a scheme to 
make him protect himself instead of going out 
to get us.” 

“It’s a good notion,” says Catty, “but I don’t 
see how it can be done. As the financial papers 
say, his position is secure.” 

“Well,” says I, “if I meet him his nose won’t 
be. It’ll be mighty insecure.” 

“What I want to do,” he says, “is start to 
deliver wood. We’ve got a lot cut, and the 
sooner we deliver it and get our money, the 
better off we’re going to be.” 

“Sounds good,” says I, “but how?” 

“Hire more men and teams,” he says, “and 
get them on the job. I’m going out now and 
hire every team and every kind of a wagon I 
can, and to-morrow I’m going to start deliver¬ 
ing so fast the air will be full of stove wood.” 

202 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“How much have we got cut?” 

“I don’t know, but it ought to be a couple of 
hundred cords, anyhow. Not all split into stove 
size, but a lot of our orders are for chunks 
anyhow.” 

“Then,” says I, “let’s get at it.” 

“Make a list of men who’ve got teams,” says 
he, “and we’ll divide it, and hire as many of ’em 
as we can.” 

“Then we’d better go to the office where we 
can work,” says I. Which is what we did. 
We got a paper and made out a list of men in 
town who had horses and wagons, and there 
were about a dozen, but we knew we couldn’t 
get them all. When we had our list we divided 
it up and went out to hire the men and teams. 

“Start delivering the smallest orders first,” 
says he. “It’ll be easier to get the money.” 

“Fine,” says I. 

We didn’t get any supper that night, but 
before we went to bed we’d hired seven teams 
to be on the job early in the morning, and if 
Toop didn’t turn up something before the next 
night we’d be so much ahead of him, anyhow. 
And that was something. 


203 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


W ELL, next morning at daylight we were 
out on the job, and so were the teams. 
Mr. Print had got a pretty good crew and the 
saw was buzzing along like a beehive and the 
wood was piling up again in a way that did my 
heart good. Or it would have done it good if 
I hadn’t felt the way I did about Catty. I just 
couldn’t get excited about anything. Catty was 
as chipper as a cricket, and he acted funny, 
too. He acted like he does when he’s all filled 
up with some big idea, and is kind of stuck on 
himself because he’s thought of it. 

We worked that day, you can bet. We helped 
load, and then we rode into town, and, as fast 
as the men unloaded at the houses of our cus¬ 
tomers, we collected. But it takes a long time 
to deliver wood, even when you’ve quite a gang 
of men working. You can’t work too many 
without having them get in each other’s way, 
and a team that loaded and delivered and un¬ 
loaded four cords of wood from our lot in a day 
was doing pretty well. With a couple of extra 
big trucks we’d managed to hire we delivered 

204 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


more, so that by supper time we had got to 
town and collected for exactly thirty-three 
cords. That was something, but I would have 
liked to have seen it ten times as much. 

Next day we started out the same way, and 
before folks were through with their breakfasts 
we had delivered our first mess of loads. My 
goodness, how we worked! My hands were as 
full of splinters as a quillpig is of quills. The 
men got kind of interested, too, and worked as 
hard as if it was their own job. The second 
loads were delivered and the teams back and 
loading again by ten o’clock. Just about then 
I looked up and saw Toop in his little run¬ 
about. He was out in the road watching with 
a kind of a satisfied look on his face, and 
when he saw that I saw him he laughed right 
out. 

“What are you squawking about?” says I. 

“Oh,” says he, “you’ll find out soon enough.” 

“If you go laughing at me,” says I, “you'll 
find out something sooner than that.” 

“Going to buy all my wood and shut off com¬ 
petition, weren’t you?” he says. 

“What we were going to do,” says I, “isn’t 
any of your business.” 

“I made it my business,” he says. “You two 
kids have been pretty snooty, and it's about 

205 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

time you got taken down. And I’m the little 
elevator to do it. Way down to the basement/' 

“Listen to what’s perched in the road,” says 
I to Catty. 

“I hear,” he says, “what’s it trying to say?” 

“Guess it’s talking hog Latin,” says I, “I 
don’t understand it very well.”* 

“You will when you get to town,” says Toop. 
“Read the paper. When you get there read a 
paper the first thing you do—and then take a 
look around.” 

“What I’d like to do,” says I, “is fix you so 
you could look around the back of your own 
neck.” 

“Profiteers!” says he. 

“What’s that?” says I. 

“Profiteers,” he says again. “Taking advan¬ 
tage of your own friends. That’s what you’re 
doing. Just because they can’t get coal you’re 
selling them wood at outrageous prices.” 

“We’re not,” says I, “we’re taking a reason¬ 
able profit.” 

“Haw! . . . Well, you won’t take much 
more of it. I’m going to show this town that 
I’m a good friend of it. That’s what I’m going 
to do. I’m not going to sit around and see 
honest people gouged by a couple of kid sharp¬ 
ers like you. You watch.” 

206 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

I started to walk toward him and I made up 
my mind that if he did any watching for a few 
days it would be with somebody else’s eyes. 
You bet he would, for I was going to close up 
both of his, so that the butcher shop would 
have to work over time cutting steaks to put on 
to them. But he didn’t wait. He just laughed 
and waggled his fingers at us and started his 
car. Toop wasn’t the kind to stand around and 
fight. Before I got to the fence he was a 
quarter of a mile away. 

“What d’you suppose he means?” says I to 
Catty. 

“I don’t know,” says he. 

“We’d better get there and find out,” I says. 

“These loads are pretty nearly loaded. Then 
we’ll go in,” he says. 

It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes before 
we left on the first load, and it seemed to me 
that was the longest and slowest ride I ever 
took. It seemed to me I could have walked to 
California in about half of the time. But we 
did get to town finally and jumped off the load 
and ran to the newspaper office. We both 
grabbed a paper and started to look through it, 
but it didn’t take much looking. What we were 
trying to find was put where it could be found 
without any looking at all. It was the whole 

207 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

back page of the paper, and when I saw it, I 
almost keeled over backward. It was an ad¬ 
vertisement, and that advertisement just 
knocked the props from under us in a way that 
was enough to make you sick to your stummick. 

“Don’t be gouged by profiteers,” it says in 
big, black letters. “Don’t pay more than you 
have to.” Then there was some smaller print, 
but just below it, in the biggest letters the paper 
had, was the words “Stove wood.” And then it 
says: “The coal shortage is the profiteers’ op¬ 
portunity. You must have stove wood because 
you can’t have coal. But stove wood doesn’t 
cost more than it always did. Why should a 
strike in the coal mines raise the price of wood 
which grows at your door?” And then there 
was a lot about how Toop was prepared to sell 
stove wood at cost, just because he loved the 
people so, and hated to see anybody done out 
of their hard-earned money, and it ended by 
saying that he would sell wood for four dol¬ 
lars a cord as long as it lasted, beginning the 
next day at ten o’clock. 

“Well,” says I, “now what d’you think?” 

“I think,” he says, “that it might be worse.” 

“It might be true. We might really be profit¬ 
eers. We might be gouging folks, but we 
aren’t. We are really doing something for 

208 


CATTY ATKINS— FINANCIER 


them, and at a profit that’s only fair and just. 
If we hadn’t gone into the wood business in a 
wholesale way, most folks wouldn’t have been 
able to get any at all, and they couldn’t get coal, 
and there would have been a bad time all 
around. But we saw the chance, and it was a 
fair, decent chance to make reasonable money. 
Now here comes Toop, and, just because he 
wants to put it on our eye, he sells what doesn’t 
cost him a cent, for less than we can afford to 
sell for. It isn’t fair, but it makes us look like 
a couple of gougers. But we’re not.” 

“Nobody’ll ever believe it.” 

“It doesn’t matter a bit what people believe, 
so long as you know you’re right,” he says. 

“But,” says I, “so far as our pocketbooks are 
concerned, it matters a lot. We’ll never sell 
another cord of wood.” 

“Serve them right if we didn’t,” says he. “It 
would be all right anyhow if we could afford to 
wait, because people have got to have wood this 
winter, and we’ve got it to sell. But we can’t 
wait. Wages and cost is going right on.” 

In about ten minutes we met one of our teams 
in the street and the driver stopped and says, 
“The folks where I was to deliver this wood 
wouldn’t take it.” 

“Why?” 


209 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“They said they were being cheated.” 

“Fine,” says Catty, “take it up to my house.” 
Then he turned to me and says, “all the loads 
that are refused we can deliver to your house 
or mine, and then we won’t be out anything for 
the work.” 

“Sure,” says I, “but what about the other 
hundreds and hundreds of cords?” 

“Well,” he says, “we can quit right now and 
not lose more than our whole summer’s work 
has earned us. We can pay for everything, 
and just about break even.” 

“What?” says I, “not throw away all the 
hard work we’ve done since school was out?” 

“Yes,” says he, “we can do that.” 

“I won’t,” says I. 

“But,” says he, “how can we go on? Folks 
won’t buy our wood.” 

“There’s some way,” I says, “and we’ve got 
to find it. I won’t quit. I tell you I won’t quit. 
No, sir. That Toop kid can’t go around all the 
rest of his life bragging about how he 
licked us.” 

“Good for you, Wee-wee,” says Catty. “I 
just wanted to know how you felt about it. I’m 
with you, and we’ll stick until they get maple 
sap out of the iron fence posts.” 

“You bet,” says I. 


210 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


I T was a puzzle, and I’m not good at figuring 
out puzzles. Anybody with half an eye 
could see that folks wouldn’t buy wood from 
Catty and me for five dollars when they could 
get it from Toop for four dollars. And, when 
they had got it into their heads that four dol¬ 
lars was the right price, they wouldn’t want to 
pay five no matter what happend. And there 
we were. Of course, Toop couldn’t supply a 
quarter of the wood the town had to have, but 
he was supplying it quick, and he had spoiled 
our market. We had to have money coming in 
all the time to pay off the men who were work¬ 
ing for us, and, of course, none was coming in. 
It looked to me like we would not only not make 
a penny, but would lose every cent we had made 
in our other investments all summer. 

“Well,” I says to myself, “Toop’s wood may 
catch fire or something, and that’ll help. If it 
burned up, folks couldn’t buy it.” 

Which was true, but it wasn’t going to burn 
up, not then. Where it would burn would be 
in the stoves of folks we had expected to sell 

211 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

our own wood to, and who had actually ordered 
wood from us. We had discovered the market 
and worked it up, and then along comes this kid 
and just spoils it to be mean. 

I hunted up Catty, not that I wanted to see 
him, because I felt as if I never wanted to see 
him again after his turning traitor to Pawky, 
but because business made it necessary for me 
to see him. He was sitting in our office whis¬ 
tling to himself and writing on a piece of paper. 
When I came in he looked up, but he didn’t say 
a word and went right on writing again as if I 
hadn’t come in at all. 

“Well?” says I. 

“Urn. . . says he. “Honesty is the besc 
policy.” 

“Maybe,” says I, “but what’s that got to do 
with the present price of stove wood?” 

“A lot, possibly,” says he. 

“How a lot?” says I. 

“Well,” he says, “you never can tell what 
funny things happen on account of telling the 
truth.” 

“I guess,” I says, “you must be off your 
trolley.” 

“No,” he says, “but a current’s beginning to 
run through my trolley wire.” 

“What kind of a current?” says I. 

212 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“Of common sense,” he says. 

“It’s time,” I says kind of short. 

“We agree on that,” he says kind of dry. 

“But that doesn’t sell stove wood,” says I. 

“It may,” says he. “If we tell enough truth 
and tell it hard enough.” 

“I’m willing to tell all I know,” I says. 

He tore off a piece of paper and handed it to 
me with a grin. “Honest?” he says. “All you 
know? Well, write it on that and be sure you 
leave a wide margin.” 

I could have poked him one in the eye, but I 
couldn’t see what good that would do, so I just 
says, “You think you’re kind of smart, to-day.” 

“I hope I am,” says he. “One of us has got 
to be smart or our soup ’ll be spilled.” 

“If you’ve got any kind of a scheme,” says I, 
“why, out with it and don’t talk so much 
foolishness.” 

“I have,” he says, “and maybe it’ll work and 
maybe it won’t. But here’s what there is of it, 
and as I said, it’s nothing but telling the truth. 
I’m going to advertise in the paper like Toop 
did and tell folks all about the stove wood busi¬ 
ness and how much profit we make and why 
they ought to buy stove wood—and I’ve got a 
little joker to stick on the end of it if it doesn’t 
work without.” 


213 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


“What kind of a joker ?” 

“The kind,” he says, “that a bumblebee car¬ 
ries in his pants pocket.” 

I knew there was no use asking him any 
more, because he is that set in his way and that 
fond of himself that he just won’t tell anything 
until he thinks the right moment for telling has 
come—I mean the moment when the thing he 
tells will sound biggest and make him look the 
smartest. He likes to be It with a big I, and I 
don’t know that I blame him so much for that. 
T n a minute he says: 

“What I’m going to tell the people is this. 
I'm going to tell them what I know about coal. 
I know that there won’t be a ton of coal per 
family in town this winter. Nobody knows 
when any coal will come. I’ve found that out. 
Coal can’t be gotten. That’s the truth, and I’m 
going to tell it to everybody, so they’ll be sure 
to know it and to think about it.” 

“Yes,” says I, “and what then?” 

“I’m going to tell them that if they want to 
cook and keep warm till spring they’ll have to 
have stove wood.” 

“Sure, so they’ll buy it of Toop.” 

“Maybe,” he says. 

“We don’t want to sell his wood.” 

“Not exactly. But he’s selling it. Five hun- 

214 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

dred cords of it. And that’s all he’s got. I’m 
going to tell the folks just how much he’s got, 
and that it don’t amount to a cord a house for 
this town. See? He can’t supply everybody, 
can he? Well, I’ll prove to them that Toop can 
give them only a fraction of the wood they’ve 
got to have, and I’ll explain why he can sell it 
cheap.’’ 

“Yes,” says I. 

“And then I’ll tell them about us, and how 
many cords we can supply, and how much we 
have got to charge for it, and about what we 
figure our profit will be. We’re in this to do 
legitimate business and make a legitimate 
profit, and no sensible person can object to that. 
I’m going to tell the whole truth, and I’m going 
to say that we can supply everybody who wants 
wood and at a reasonable price. I’m going to 
show them that nobody else can supply them, 
and that they’ve got to buy from us sooner or 
later.” 

“Maybe they won’t believe it.” 

“I’ll prove it,” says he. 

“I don’t think much of the scheme,” says I. 
“Can’t you think up something smart?” 

“There’s times when the smartest thing in 
the world is just straightforward dealing,” says 
he. “There’s times when there’s nothing so 

215 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


clever as just to tell folks exactly what you are 
up to and why you’re up to it. I don’t know but 
it’s the best plan all the time.” 

“Is that why you told that man where 
Pawky’s invention was hidden in the cave?” 
says I. 

He didn’t get mad; he just looked at me and 
sort of smiled, and it was mighty aggravating, 
I can tell you. 

“Well,” I says, “we’re in a tight corner where 
we’ve got to do something, and if this is the 
best you can think of, why we’ll have to try it.” 

“It’ll do for a start,” he says, “but I’ve still 
got Toop on my mind. I’d like to play around 
with him sort of kind and gentle.” 

“Get busy with your advertising,” says I. 

“We’ve got to have money Saturday to pay 
off our help,” he says, “and advertising won’t 
get it in time. We’ve got to sell some wood.” 

“We’ve got to sell something, or do some¬ 
thing, or something,” says I, “and,” I says, 
“how’s Pawky? I haven’t seen him to-day.” 

“He’s happy,” says Catty. “He’s rigging up 
some kind of a jiggeroon with dangledoos on it, 
and you could shout in his ear without ever 
disturbing him.” 

“We’ve got to do something about him,” 
says I. 


216 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“We have,” says Catty. “Can’t have him 
around under foot much longer. He’s a nui¬ 
sance. Interferes with business.” 

“Why,” says I, “don’t you just tell Toop 
we’ve got him here ? That would get him out 
of the road.” 

“I’ve thought of that,” says he, “but some¬ 
how I just don’t feel quite in the humor to do 
it—yet.” 

“You mean you may feel in the humor?” I 
asked. 

“I rather think I shall,” he says. “When I 
do I’ll let you know, so you can be around to 
see the fun.” 

Well, I was that disgusted I could hardly 
speak. To think I had been chumming around 
all these years with Catty Atkins, and looking 
up to him and thinking he was the finest fellow 
on earth, and now to have him turn out to be 
what I could see he was. It just didn’t seem 
possible, but there it was, as plain as the nose 
on your face. I couldn’t even speak for a while, 
but when I could speak I said—and I meant 
every word of it, “Catty Atkins,” says I, “if you 
ever get so low down and so mean that you give 
Pawky away to Toop, I’m going to take you 
out behind my dad’s barn and I’m going to lick 
3^ou till you can’t walk. And that’s that.” 

217 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Good for you,” says he. “I guess you must 
be quite a scrapper.” 

“I’m enough of one to do that,” I says, “and 
Eli show you.” 

“Well, I sha’n’t do it for maybe a day or 
two,” he says, “so you can be exercising your 
muscle during that time, and getting in train¬ 
ing. I’ll bet,” he says, “that it’ll be quite a 
fight.” 

“You’re trying to make fun of me,” I says, 
“but this isn’t a good time to do it. You go 
along about your business and I’ll train along 
with you till this deal is through. Then I never 
want to see or hear of you again.” 

“Wee-wee,” says he, “you’ve got an awful 
unfeeling nature. You’re harsh and cruel. Oh, 
Wee-wee, can’t you forgive and forget?” And 
then he laughed so hearty he almost fell out of 
his chair. I took one step toward him with my 
fists all ready, but then I stopped. I would 
thrash him when the time came, but it wasn’t 
the time then. No, sir. We couldn’t afford a 
fight now, with all our business to look after. 
So I just undoubled my fists and grabbed hold 
of the seat of my pants with both hands and 
hung on, so my knuckles wouldn’t fly at him 
when I didn’t want them to. 

“That ’ll be all for to-day,” I says. “Let’s get 

218 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


to work and do what’s got to be done. This 
trouble between us can be taken care of 
afterward.” 

“And it will be, Wee-wee, don’t worry,” says 
Catty. 


219 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


W ELL, Catty got to work on his adver¬ 
tisements, and they came out in the paper. 
When folks saw them and read them there was 
a lot of talk, but nothing much happened, and 
Catty and I felt kind of discouraged. At any 
rate, I did. Catty wouldn’t let on if he 
was discouraged. But next day, without 
saying a word to me, he came out with 
another advertisement, which wasn’t ex¬ 
actly an advertisement at all. It was just two 
telegrams, printed in big type. The first 
one was signed Atkins and Moore, which 
was Catty and me, and it was to the Wat- 
trous Coal and Wood Company in the city. 
It read: 

“How much will you offer for two thousand 
cords first-class beech and maple stove wood, 
FOB this town?” 

The answer, printed right under it, said: 
“Will give four-fifty a cord if immediate de¬ 
livery is guaranteed. Signed, Wattrous Coal 
and Wood Company.” 

And under this Catty said to the folks, “If 

220 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


you want wood for this winter, get your order* 
in within twelve hours/’ 

That was all, not another word. Well, I 
almost had a cat fit. Somehow I’d never 
dreamed of trying to sell our wood out of town. 
It never occurred to me we could do business 
in foreign parts, as you might say, but you 
could depend on Catty to think of everything. 
There was two thousand cords as good as sold. 
Of course we lost fifty cents a cord profit, but 
there would be enough left—if only we could 
deliver the wood. But to deliver it we had to 
have money to pay our men and we couldn’t get 
the money until we sold the wood. So there we 
were again. 

But I guess that second advertisement kind 
of scared folks, for the first thing in the morn¬ 
ing there were two men in our office and each 
of them wanted twenty-five cords. 

“The price,” says one of them, “is four-fifty, 
like the paper said.” 

“The price,” says Catty, “is five dollars, like 
we sold it to you before. If you take two thou¬ 
sand cords, we can make it to you for four-fifty. 
But not a cent less on retail orders.” 

“I won’t pay five,” says the man. 

“Then,” says Catty, “we can’t do business. 
Good morning, sir.” 


221 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“But Eve got to have wood,” says the man. 
“I can’t get coal.” 

“That’s so,” says Catty, “but our price is five 
dollars. Maybe you can get it cheaper some 
place else.” 

“You know very well I can’t,” says the man. 
He kind of scowled, and then he pulled out his 
pocket book and counted out a hundred and 
twenty-five dollars. “I’m paying in advance,” 
says he, “so I’ll be sure to get my wood deliv¬ 
ered right off.” 

Well, that was that. The other man didn’t 
say a word, but just made out his check for 
a hundred and twenty-five, which made two 
hundred and fifty together, and we didn’t 
need to worry for a day or two. Before the 
day was over we had taken back orders for 
a whaling lot of wood, and it looked as if 
everything was all right again, but Catty was 
ambitious. 

“We ought to find out some way to take care 
of that Wattrous Coal Company,” he says. 
“Two thousand cords is a lot, and it would 
be a lot of profit. I wonder if we can’t man¬ 
age it?” 

“No,” says I, “we’ve got our hands full.” 

“If we had another saw and twice as many 
men,” says he. 


222 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“Where’d we get it?” 

“Well, there is another saw, and there are 
more men. As long as there are things, why 
we can get them. Now there’s Toop’s saw and 
his crew. He must be pretty nearly through 
with them.” 

“But he wouldn’t sell us his saw,” says I. 

“He won’t keep it for a souvenir,” says 
Catty. 

“Try to buy it and see,” says I. 

“I’m going to,” he says, and with that he 
went out of the office, and I didn’t see him again 
until night. When he came back he was grin¬ 
ning like a Cheshire cat, whatever that is, and 
went and sat down and pretended nothing had 
happened, just to aggravate me. I stood it as 
long as I could and then I says, “Well, what 
you been up to now?” 

“Nothing much,” says he. 

“Did you buy that saw?” says I. 

“I did,” says he. 

“From Toop’s father,” says he. 

“How’d you manage that?” 

“Just went to him and says, 'Hear you have 
a buzz saw for sale.’ ” 

“What’d he say?” 

“He says his son had one that he was through 
with, and he guessed it was for sale, and I 

223 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


asked how much, and he told me what it cost 
and I offered him half, and told him the saw 
wouldn’t ever be any good to him any more. 
Well, we haggled some, but in the end I got it, 
and it’s out on our lot all set up and sawing 
wood, and we’ve six more men at work and two 
more teams, and two flat cars are ordered in 
and to-morrow we begin delivering to the Wat- 
trous Coal and Wood Company. And that,” 
says he, “is a pretty fair day’s work.” 

“Huh,” says I, “it don’t sound very hard.” 

“It wasn’t,” says he. “Lots of things aren’t 
hard. All it takes it just sense enough to think 
them up and nerve enough to do them. I’ve 
wired the Wattrous people deliveries would be¬ 
gin at once, C. O. D.” 

“And we’re out of that pickle,” says I. 
“Well, I never thought we would be, and 
it doesn’t seem possible we are. It was too 
easy.” 

“But,” says he, “there are a lot of folks who 
wouldn’t have got out of it, no matter how easy 
it was.” 

“And I’m one of them, I suppose.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re quite bright every 
now and then.” 

“Huh. ... So now we’ve got to deliver four 
thousand cords instead of two?” 

224 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“You bet / 5 

“I can see us doing it,” says I. 

“You’ll see more when I get about ten 
more men to work to-morrow. I’ve got ’em, 
too.” 

That was all right. But, I said to myself, 
there’ll be a lot more water passing under the 
bridge before we have the money safe in the 
bank. And there was. 

Just then I turned around, and there, stand¬ 
ing in our door, was Mr. Toop’s hired man—the 
one who had caught us in the cave, and the one 
Catty told where Pawky’s box was. 

“Good morning,” says he, kind of sour. 
“Thought I’d drop in to see you.” 

“Always glad to have visitors,” says Catty. 
“What can we do for you ?” 

“You can tell me what you boys are acting 
so suspicious about, that’s what you can do. 
You fooled me the other day out at that cave of 
yours, but you won’t fool me again. I mean 
business. We’ve been watching you pretty 
careful, and we know you are helping this fel¬ 
low Pawky. We know you know where he 
is. We know you have been buying food for 
him and taking it to where he’s hid. Now, 
you’d better come through and tell what you 
know.” 


225 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“I’ve been kind of thinking that over/’ says 
Catty. 

“Then go ahead,” says the man. 

“But,” says Catty, “this man Pawky seems 
kind of valuable, and folks don’t give away 
valuable things.” 

“Catty Atkins!” says I. 

“Shut up, Wee-wee, I’m managing this,” he 
says. 

“And I don’t like the way you’re doing it,” 
says I. 

“Well,” says the man, “do I understand 
you’re willing to make a deal?” 

“You don’t understand anything,” says 
Catty. “We don’t even admit we know this 
Pawky. But you can bet, if we do know him, 
we’re not going to give him away just for fun, 
and we’re going to know more about the whole 
business. There must be a lot of money in it.” 

“Oh, not so much,” says the man. “He just 
knows something Mr. Toop wants to find 
out.” 

“Such as what ?” says Catty. 

“Just a business secret,” says the man. 

“Um. . . . Well, I think it’s a pretty valu¬ 
able business secret, and I’m a business man. 
You go and tell Mr. Toop that I am, and that 
I do business in a businesslike way. If he 

226 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

wants to buy anything from me, you say to him 
that he’d better come and make an offer before 
I sell to somebody else.” 

“Who else?” 

“How should I know ? If this secret is worth 
money to one man, it’s worth money to another, 
and I’ll find him.” 

“What do you want ?” 

“I don’t know exactly,” says Catty. “I don’t 
even know that I’ve got anything to sell. But 
if I have, I’ll deal with Mr. Toop direct. You 
tell him that. Tell him we might know some¬ 
thing and we might not. But if we do, and he’s 
willing to take a chance on it, he’d better drop 
around to talk.” 

“That’s the best I get out of you, is it?” 

“That,” says Catty, “is the best.” 

“Then he’ll be here, and you’d better be here 
to see him. And watch your step, young feller, 
watch your step.” 

“With both eyes,” says Catty, and then the 
man went out. I could hardly wait for him to 
go before I burst out at Catty: 

“Do you mean to say you’re going to tell Mr. 
Toop where Mr. Pawky is?” I asked. 

“Haven’t made up my mind,” says he, “but 
I think I shall. Anyhow, I shall if he doesn’t 
find him before I get a chance.” 

227 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

*‘Then,” says I, “I just want to tell you that 
I think you’re too low down to live. You’re 
low downer than I thought you were. I can’t 
understand it, Catty. I can’t understand it.” 

Honest, I felt like bellering, but I wouldn’t 
let him see how bad I felt for a carload of ice 
cream soda So I just walked out. 


228 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 


R IGHT then and there I made up my mind 
. to one thing, and that was that it wouldn’t 
do Catty any good to tell Mr. Toop where 
Pawky was, because I was going to rescue him 
and hide him myself, where nobody but I would 
know where he was. I wouldn’t trust anybody, 
not a living soul. So I started out to plan what 
I would do and how I would do it. It was 
pretty hard, because, up to now, Catty had been 
the one who did the scheming, and I just came 
in when there was something to do. But I 
figured I’d had quite a lot of practice watching 
how his head worked, and so maybe I could 
make mine work the same way. It sounded a 
lot easier than it actually was, and after I had 
worked and schemed for hours, and had a sort 
of a plan made up, why it didn’t sound so all- 
fired smart after all. But it was the best I 
could do, and you can’t expect much more from 
a fellow than his best—if he’s sure it is his 
best. Of course you never can tell what is your 
best until you’re forced, but I was forced now. 
Somehow I wasn’t so much worried about 

229 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

getting Pawky away from Toop and his men, 
as I was about sneaking him out of Catty’s 
sight without Catty’s catching on. I wondered 
if Catty had any idea what I had in mind, and 
then I decided it would be best to make believe 
he knew. If I went about it as if Catty knew 
what I was trying to do, then it would be all 
right. If he didn’t know I’d get away with it, 
and if he did know I’d be ready for him. 

The main thing was to get at it in a hustle, 
because Toop would be coming down to see 
Catty as soon as he could get there, which 
would be after dinner. So I sat down and 
thought, and then I had an idea. Now it isn’t 
the easiest thing in the world to get a grown 
man out of town without anybody seeing him; 
but I thought of a way and you can believe I 
was pretty tickled with myself. Out in our 
yard was a big hogshead that something had 
been shipped in to dad. I figured I could roll 
that up on our wagon with its open end point¬ 
ing to the back, and then I could hang a sort 
of curtain over that and back it up to the behind 
door of our office and sneak Pawky into it as 
slick as a mouse eating cheese. Then I could 
drive off, and nobody would notice a thing. 

So I ate my dinner fast and got out the 
wagon, and rolled the hogshead up on some 

230 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


boards and fixed it right at the stern of the 
wagon as handy as a bug in a rug. I fastened 
it there with ropes and made a kind of a curtain 
out of burlap. It was about as neat a job as I 
ever did. Then I started down town, driving 
by back ways and through alleys and hoping all 
the while I’d get there before Catty was back 
from his dinner. But I didn’t have any luck. 
I backed up to the office as quiet as I could and 
then sneaked around to see what I could see. 
There was Catty inside sitting by the table we 
used for a desk, and he was figuring away at 
something as though his life depended on it. 

I went in and went to the showcase and 
fiddled around, but I didn’t speak to him. He 
didn’t speak to me for a while either, and then 
he says, “I’ve got to go up to the hotel, Wee- 
wee,” says he. “Will you stay here and mind 
the shop till I come back?” 

“Yes,” I says kind of short-like, and off he 
went. 

“Be sure,” he says, “that you don’t leave till 
I come.” 

“I won’t,” says I, 

“Because,” he says, “I’m expecting some¬ 
body, and if anybody comes, tell them to 
wait.” 

I knew he meant Mr. Toop, and I was sore 

231 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


as a boil, and I made up my mind that if that 
man did come snooping around while I was 
there I’d put a bur in his ear. 

As soon as Catty got out I went into the back 
room, where Pawky was eating a sandwich 
with one hand while he tried to fasten a wire on 
to a jigger with the other. He didn’t hear me 
come in because he was so interested in his job. 
Every once in a while he’d make a jab at his 
mouth with the sandwich, and sometimes he’d 
hit and sometimes he’d miss. Once he got his 
ear and a couple of times he stabbed his glasses, 
but it didn’t seem to make a bit of difference. 
He was just as contented one place as another, 
it seemed. 

“Mr. Pawky,” says I, “I’ve come to help you 
escape.” 

“Don’t bother me,” says he. “I’m working 
out a problem.” 

“You’ll be working out something worse than 
a problem,” says I, “if you don’t get your wits 
about you and gather up your stuff and come 
along with me. Toop ’ll have you in half an 
hour if you don’t.” 

“Where do you want me to go ?” says he. 

“Where you’ll be safe for a while, anyhow,” 
says I. 

He sighed and commenced to pack up his 

232 


I GAVE HIM A LITTLE PUSH AND HE CRAWLED IN 



' , V.'. 















CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

trinkets, and finally he was ready. “Now 
what ?” says he. 

“Eve got a slick way of getting you out of 
town,” says I. 

“What is it?” says he. 

“Come cautious,” says I “and I’ll show you.” 
So I took him to the back door and opened it as 
stealthily as I could, and showed him the hogs¬ 
head. “There,” says I, “what d’ye think of 
that?” 

“I think,” says he, “that it doesn’t look very 
comfortable.” 

“What did you expect,” says I “a Pullman 
car?” 

“I didn’t expect anything,” he says, “only to 
be let alone. Why must I go riding around in 
dirty barrels? I don’t like barrels. I never 
liked barrels. I never expect to like barrels.” 

“I’m sorry,” says I, kind of sarcastic. “If 
I’d known you had a prejudice against barrels 
I’d have fetched a box or a potato sack. But 
into the barrel you go, just the same. It’s not a 
barrel anyhow—it’s a hogshead, and there’s a 
lot of room and you can be as comfortable as 
a worm in an apple. In you go.” 

I gave him a little push and he crawled in, 
spluttering all the time and kicking up a row 
and making more noise than was safe. 

233 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Say,” I says, “if you don't keep quiet you’ll 
rouse the whole town, and if you make so much 
as a squeak after you’re in and I start to drive 
you away, I’ll come back there and just about 
step on your sore toe.” 

“I have no sore toe,” says he. 

“Then,” says I. “I’ll give you one. Now be 
still and wait a minute. Sit and think about 
something and enjoy yourself.” 

“I will,” says he. “There is an interesting 
matter which will engage me for an hour.” 

“Fine. Make it last as long as it can,” I told 
him. “But don’t sneeze or cough, or give three 
cheers or kick the walls.” Then I dropped the 
curtain and went back into the office and sat 
down. 

Nobody came but Catty. He came back in 
twenty minutes, and as I looked up the street, 
there, just a ways behind him, came the smaller 
of the two men Toop had kept spying on us. 
That kind of interested me, and I looked all 
around to see what else I could see. Sure 
enough, about a hundred feet off, trying to hide 
behind some lilac bushes, was the big man. 

“Huh,” says I to myself, “business is picking 
up,” and then I went back inside to wait for 
Catty and to see what would turn up. I was 
anxious to get away with Pawky, and yet I kind 

234 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

of wanted to hang around in the vicinity to see 
what was going to happen. 

In came Catty, looking like the cat that ate 
the canary, and saying nothing; and hardly had 
he got inside than in came the big man. 

“Mr. Toop ’ll be here in a minute,” says he, 
“and you’d better stay right here to see him.” 

“I’m going to stay here all right,” says Catty, 
“and not because Mr. Toop wants to see me. If 
it will give you any pleasure, you can tell Mr. 
Toop that this is my place of business and that 
I stay in it or leave it because I decide I 
want to.” 

That sounded more like the old Catty I used 
to know and I perked up for a second, but then 
I remembered how he’d turned traitor and I 
sagged back again to feeling the way I did be¬ 
fore. The man scowled and said Catty was 
pretty fresh, and Catty answered him right 
back. 

“Mister,” he says, “I’m not fresh. If any¬ 
body’s fresh it is you and Mr. Toop—always 
meddling with us and acting as though you 
owned the earth. Well, nobody owns the earth 
that I’ve heard of. Not this part of it, any¬ 
how. So, if you want to do any business with 
me just reach down in your side pocket and 
pull out your manners and be polite about it. 

235 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Nobody around here is afraid of you. If the 
truth was told I shouldn’t wonder but what you 
was kind of nervous yourself, because none of 
you act like men that was keeping right square 
inside of what you ought to do. Now, how if 
I was to go and get the sheriff and tell him this 
whole story ? What then ?” 

The man didn’t say anything back, and just 
walked to the door and looked up the street. 

“Here comes Mr. Toop,” says he. 

I knew I ought to be getting along about my 
business then, but I couldn’t bear to leave until 
I found out what Catty was up to, and what 
was going to happen. Somehow, even then, I 
hung on to a kind of a faint hope that Catty 
had been fooling me, and that the whole rotten 
business was some sharp scheme of his to get 
the best of Toop. And so I stayed, but I kept 
my ear cocked on the back door for any rumpus 
from Pawky. 

Then Mr. Toop came in, as pompous as a 
three-layer cake with pink frosting on top of 
it, and says right off, as if he owned the place. 

“Well, young man, I understand you have 
something to tell me?” 

“Did somebody tell you that?” says Catty. 
“Because if he did, it wasn’t the message I 
sent you.” 


236 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

"What was the message, then?” says Mr. 
Toop, short and stern. 

"It was that if you wanted to talk business 
to me, why, I’d be here to talk it—and here 
I am.” 

"About this man Pawky?” 

"What I remember saying was that I didn’t 
admit I ever saw any Pawky. So let’s start 
from there. I’m ready to talk business if you 
want to, but it’s got to be the business I want to 
talk, and it’s got to start from the place I want it 
to start from. If that's all right with you, why, 
we’ll go ahead. If it isn’t all right, then we’ll 
call it a day and no harm done to anybody.” 

Mr. Toop sort of grinned at that, and it 
seemed to me he looked kind of admiring at 
Catty. "Go ahead,” says he. 

And then the big man spoke up. "Mr. Toop,” 
says he, "I’ve been keeping an eye on these 
boys, and I’ve a first-class idea the man we want 
isn’t many feet from here. Now, if you say 
so, I’ll make a search, and then you won’t have 
to take any of this kid’s back talk.” 

Mr. Toop hesitated, and Catty got up and 
says, "Wee-wee, will you just step over for 
your dad and mine ? Tell them a man is forcing 
his way around our office. Have them come 
right over.” 


237 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

“There, there,” says Mr. Toop, “nobody’s 
going to force anything.” 

“You can bet nobody is—around here,” says 
Catty. 

“Well, what do you want to talk about?” says 
Mr. Toop. 

“I want to talk about stove wood,” says 
Catty. 

“Stove wood!” 

“That very thing. You know Wee-wee and 
I are in the stove-wood business. We sat down 
and discovered how this town wasn’t going to 
be able to get coal, and we turned to and ar¬ 
ranged to supply it with wood. A good, fair, 
honest business proposition. We had orders all 
taken for about two thousand cords. Then 
somebody came in and told this town we were 
cheats and were overcharging folks and offered 
to sell wood a lot cheaper than we could. It 
busted our market and folks canceled our 
orders. We think it was a kind of a rotten 
thing to do. Now, this person has about five 
hundred cords all cut and ready to deliver. It 
won’t supply the town, but it does mess up our 
business—and that’s what I want to talk 
about.” 

“Oh,” says Mr. Toop, “that’s it, eh?” 

“That’s it. Now, you claim to be a fair busi- 

238 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


ness man, and you’ve come here to make some 
kind of a deal with me, and with Wee-wee. 
Here’s a deal you can make—you can sell me 
that stove wood, because, after all, it’s yours 
and you furnished all the brains that went into 
it. I’m not asking you to lose any money, and 
I’m making you a fair offer. I’ll pay you, or 
your son, whoever owns that wood, four dollars 
a cord for it. There’s my proposition. You 
may take it or leave it.” 

“Stove wood is something I’m not interested 
in,” says Mr. Toop. “It was something else 
you agreed to discuss with me.” 

“I’ll talk about anything you want,” says 
Catty, “after we’re through talking stove 
wood.” 

“Oh,” says Mr. Toop. “So that’s it, eh?” 
He grinned, like he was kind of pleased with 
himself, and I could see in his eyes that he 
thought he was taking advantage of a boy who 
didn’t know enough to make a real dicker. “If 
that’s all that’s standing between us and an 
understanding, I guess I can arrange about the 
wood.” 

“Guessing won’t do,” says Catty. “Nothing 
will do but this: You sit down and write out 
a bill of sale of that wood, and agree to take 
in payment for it a promissory note from me 

239 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


and Wee-wee payable in thirty days. Then you 
deliver that bill of sale and take the note, and 
then the wood belongs to us. See? When 
that’s done we’ll go on and talk about anything 
in the world that you want to.” 

“That’s easy,” says Mr. Toop, and he sat 
down and wrote out the bill of sale, and Catty 
made out a note which both of us signed. And 
that was that. 

“Now,” says Mr. Toop, “what about 
Pawky?” 

“What about Pawky?” says Catty. 

“Where is he? Do you know him? Where 
have you hidden him?” 

I waited, hoping Catty would turn out to be 
decent at the last minute, but he didn’t. “Sure 
we know him,” he says. “We’ve had him hid¬ 
den for a long time, first one place and then 
another, and it’s been a circus fooling these 
regular detective men you hired to chase us 
around.” 

“Where is he now ?” 

“Catty!” I says, but he paid no attention to 
me. He just got up and walked to the door 
and looked down the street, and then he came 
back and looked at Toop and says, “We hid him 
in the old lighthouse a spell, and when it got 
too hot there we decided we’d better have him 

240 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

where we could look after him without drag¬ 
ging food all over the county, so—well, we de¬ 
cided to bring him here.” 

“Here?” says Mr. Toop. 

“Here. Uh-huh. Right under everybody’s 
nose.” 

I edged toward the door, and made all ready 
to slip out and jump on the wagon and drive 
Pawky off as fast as I could go, but Catty went 
and ruined that. I hated him for it. 

“Better stay here,” says he to me. “You can’t 
get away with him.” Then he turned to Toop 
and kind of grinned and says, “My partner and 
I sort of disagreed about telling you where 
Pawky is, and he figured on stealing him away 
and hiding him where I wouldn’t know. But I 
guessed he was going to, and when he came 
ambling through town with a hogshead on his 
wagon, all fixed up with a lovely curtain, I knew 
what was up.” He got up and walked to the 
door again and threw it open. Then he came 
back. “Well, Mr. Toop,” says he, “Mr. 
Pawky’s in our back room there, or else in the 
hogshead on Wee-wee’s wagon.” 

Well, I couldn’t believe it until it was actually 
done. It didn’t seem possible Catty could do 
it. But he’d done it. He’d done the lowest 
down thing I ever heard of anybody doing. I 

241 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


didn’t know which way to turn, nor what to 
say or do. 

“You sha’n’t have him. You sha’n’t take 
him,” says I, and I ran to the door and stood 
against it. “You dassen’t pass me. Don’t you 
dare try it.” 

The big man grinned and came toward me, 
and just then a new voice speaks up and says, 
“What’s all the excitement here ?” 

I looked, and there was a gentleman in the 
door—a real, regular gentleman, and you could 
tell it by the looks of him. 

“Help me keep these men out of here,” says I. 

“What for ?” says he, and then he turned to 
Mr. Toop and says, “Why, how are you Toop? 
Glad to see you. Heard you had a summer 
place up here.” 

“Winthrop!” says Mr. Toop. “What are 
you doing here?” 

“Ran down on business,” says Mr. Winthrop, 
“some business in connection with a patent. 

. . By the way, Catty, where’s the inventor? 
I’m anxious to meet him.” 

Catty grinned. “I calc’late,” he says, “the 
inventor’s scrooched up in a hogshead invent¬ 
ing something. He’s always inventing. I’ll call 
him in. . . . But wait a second, I want you to 
meet my partner, Mr. Winthrop. Wee-wee 

242 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Moore, this is Mr. Winthrop, the general at¬ 
torney for the Universal Electrical Company, 
the biggest manufacturers of all kinds of elec¬ 
trical things in the world. You’ll like Wee-wee, 
Mr. Winthrop. You can always depend on 
him. You sure can. He always does just what 
you expect of him.” 

“But-” says Toop. “But—I—why did 

you come here?” 

“Why,” says Mr. Winthrop, “I represent the 
interests of an inventor named Pawky who has 
been staying hereabouts. He has an invention 
my company is much interested in, but I’ve 
been induced to represent Mr. Pawky per¬ 
sonally. My young friend Atkins here induced 
me to do it. He seemed to think Mr. Pawky 
was in danger of not getting a square deal. 
Hardly seems likely, but that’s what Catty 
thought.” 

“Catty!” says I, “how does Catty figure 

in it?” 

“Why,” says Mr. Winthrop, “he’s been writ¬ 
ing me letters and telling me all about what 
happened here. It seems the president knew 
me, or knew about me, and advised Catty to 
trust me if he had to trust anybody in the elec¬ 
trical business. So Catty and I have got pretty 
well acquainted. . . . And that’s that. Now, 

243 




CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 


Mr. Toop, was it possible you wanted to see 
my client ?” 

Toop didn’t say anything. 

“Because I’m willing you should,” says Mr. 
Winthrop. “If you can make him a fairer or 
more satisfactory offer for his invention than 
the Universal can, I shall advise him to accept 
it. But I doubt if you can. . . . No, I very 
much question if you can. . . . Eh? . . . You 
don’t care to see him, then? No trouble at all, 
I assure you. We’ll have him right in.” 

Mr. Toop snorted and made a noise in his 
chest, like he was going to blow up and bust, 
but he didn’t. He just turned and rushed out of 
the room, and Mr. Winthrop looked after him 
sort of grave, and with his lip curled a little. 

“If you always do busines on the level, fel¬ 
lows,” he said, “you’ll never have to make any 
exits like that. . . . And now, where’s my 
client, and where are his diagrams and his 
models?” 

“Fetch in Pawky,” says Catty to me, “and 
while you’re out just look in the big drawer 
under our pop-corn wagon. You’ll find a box 
in there, and I guess you’ve seen the box 
before.” 

I was flabbergasted. Honest, I didn’t know 
what to think, but I went out and told Pawky 

244 


CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

to go in, and then I went to the pop-corn wagon, 
and there was Pawky’s box, the one we had hid 
in the cave and that Catty had told the man the 
hiding place of. And then, all of a sudden, I 
understood. Catty hadn’t told anything. All 
he had done was tell the place where the box 
used to be. He’d told because he knew the box 
wasn’t there any more. And the reason he 
knew it wasn’t there was because he must have 
sneaked out, unbeknownst to me, and hid it 
some place else. 

Well, I felt like a ninny, and I didn’t dare 

even to look at Cattv when I went back in. But 

* 

then, I says to myself, how was I to know, and 
if he wanted to make himself look like a traitor, 
how could he expect folks not to think he was 
one? 

“Catty,” says I, “you’ve played a low down 
trick on me—but, knowing you like I do I 
shouldn’t ever have believed you could do such 
a thing. I ought to have known better.” 

“Don’t worry,” says he. “You acted just 
right, and I’m proud of you. You sure came 
through with flying colors, and even at the very 
end you’d have fought those men before you’d 
have let them through that door. . . . Wee- 
wee, you’re as good a pal as they make and the 
kind of a fellow I want to tie to.” 

245 



CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

Well, that was about the end of that mix-up. 
Mr. Winthrop and Pawky and Catty and I got 
together, and they fixed up an agreement, and 
it was fair and aboveboard, so that Mr. Pawky 
would get what he ought to for his invention. 
And besides he got a laboratory, all fixed up 
with everything he needed, in the big factory of 
the Universal Electric Company, where he 
could go on inventing to his heart’s content. 
. . . It was fine. 

As for Catty and I, well, it took a little while 
for us to get all settled up and our business 
stowed away, but at last we struck a balance— 
that’s what Catty said it was, and found out 
how much we’d turned our first fifty dollars 
into. It sounded pretty good, though it wasn’t 
a million. 

The schedule looked about like this: 


Summer boarder grocery route. $167.53 

Pop corn, peanuts, etc. 96.09 

Mowing lawns (profit). 56.76 

Sundries, including rowboat, hard¬ 
ware, showcase, dickers, etc., etc. . 188.48 

Stove wood, including 2000 cords sold 
to the wood and coal company, and 
a dollar a cord profit on Toop’s 500 
cords.4,137.67 


246 






CATTY ATKINS—FINANCIER 

i 

We looked that over and shook hands, and 
Catty says, “Not so bad, not so bad. If we 
can make fifty dollars grow into more than four 
thousand, why, we ought to be able to take out 
four thousand next year, and make it grow into 
pretty close to half a million. ,, 

“Maybe,” says I, “but I've had all the finance 
I want for a spell. I like variety.” 

“I like variety, too,” says he, “but I like the 
kind that pays.” 

And that was like him all over. He liked a 
lot of things all right, but the thing he liked 
best was the one where he could scheme out 
some way of making money, or improving him¬ 
self or somebody, and of getting ahead in the 
world. And the joke of it was, he usually man¬ 
aged to do it. 


THE END 






W 4 8 







•by 


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